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msn-04iinightingale · 1 year ago

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KINSHIP 3

Guardian Angels

Kinship FOB, Helios 2 hours until Jericho Superheavy Drone Arrives on site.

The guardian angels came cloaked in black, and howling like beasts. The two Leopard Class dropships came in low over the battlefield, lasers and LRMs lashing out at Blakist elements engaging the beleaguered mining effort. As they circled, their hatches opened, and out dropped six mechs.

—

Two lights, a Jenner IIC and a Raven landed lightly on their feet, immediately sprinting into the battle and opening fire with lasers and SRMs. They danced between incoming fire with a deftness that spoke of extreme dedication to their machines, the Angel ECM suite of the Raven providing an extra challenge for the Blakist mechs to surpass as they tried to target it and the others around it.

Inside the cockpit, Flora felt alive. Not in the sense that she didn’t outside the cockpit, but here, going full tilt, through enemy fire, ducking and dodging and slewing around corners on nimble avian legs, the raptor lady felt truly alive.

“Hey Zippy, tango on your two o-clock!” called her running mate, Amaryllis. “Want me to get all up in there, girl?”

“Yes please that would be nice also he’s probably not gonna like that also he’s gonna shoot you so watch out.” She replied, rushing the words out through the comms as she does everything in her life. Fast.

The Jenner IIC pivoted on a dime, using the momentum of its speed to spin the machine around on one leg and bringing its SRMs to bear on the Malak that had been tailing the Raven since they dropped in. The volley detonated across the other light mech’s armor, blowing chunks away and staggering the other machine. Amaryllis punched his machine into a run again, weaving through buildings as the enemy mech’s pilot targeted him instead of the Raven, lancing laser and light PPC fire his way.

"That's right, sugar, eyes on me! I'm way more fun to play with than she is!" he teased over the open comms.

If the Word pilot had a reply, they kept it to themselves. They did indeed give chase, in turn being hounded by Flora in the maze of suburban homes and businesses, as the two lights worked in concert to take on the Word machine.

The dance ended when the Word mech was cornered in a cul-de-sac, and was hit by a volley of SRMs from both Amaryllis and Flora’s mechs, ripping its armor open and damaging the reactor enough that the machine shut down.

“Mech kill confirmed are there any more we should take out or was that it and should we link up with the other friendlies here?” Flora asked over comms.

—

Three mediums, a lethal looking Kontio, a Mad Cat Mk III, and a Skinwalker dropped next, moving to engage the enemy medium mechs.

The first anyone on the ground was really aware of the Kontio was it skidding to stop between a Preta, about to burn a mortar crew it had found, and taking the laser hit on its armored shoulder. She pivoted the mech gracefully, the six ER medium lasers stabbing out and scoring the Preta badly enough it forced the enemy mech to pull back, no doubt the prospect of closing with the claw armed Kontio giving the Word pilot pause as well.

“I’ll tail it.” Sin says to his lance mate over the comms, pushing the Mad Cat MK III into pursuit.

“Are you all alright down there?” Carrie asked, her cool slightly husky voice coming over external comms to the mortar crew.

“Affirmative, Barghest. We’re wrapping up now, FASCAM ammunition at 10%” came the reply.

“Good. I’ll keep them off your back.” she replied, staying on station as the squad hurried to pack their equipment and fall back.

Sin pulled the trigger and launched a volley of 20 LRMs out into the snowy air, they arced, and rained down on the enemy Preta, causing it to duck behind a building.

“It’s ok, we’ve got you covered.” he says, intended for the damaged Silver Wing mech he’s stepped in front of. The mini Mad Cat had taken a light PPC hit for the other machine, but remained operational.

“Captain Veil, one medium coming your way.”

“Understood Pvt. Moving to engage.” the captain’s cold voice come over the comms.

The Skinwalker stalked through the streets, trading fire with the Preta with cool, almost mechanical precision. Weiss wasn’t one to get over emotional, in fact, Nero teased her about her coldness nearly constantly. Pulse laser fire danced this way and that as she chased the Word mech.

The Word mech missed, she did not.

The kill was a clean one, a twin large pulse laser hit to the cockpit.

Quick, clean, surgical.

“This is Captain Weiss Veil, reporting mech kill. Linking back up with Barghest, CFRI and Silver Wing forces.”

—

The last mech was also the biggest, and the most striking. The 100 ton Berserker touched down with an earthshaking impact, before standing to its full height. Charcoal black with a red right shoulder, the mech barely resembled a normal Berserker, standing on digitigrade legs, and sporting a horned, saurian skull of metal over its cockpit, and finally, the hatchet had been fashioned to resemble a giant cleaver.

With a blast of a warhorn over the external speakers, and a giggle from its pilot over the coms, the machine lumbered into the fray, belching fire and lasers at whatever targets it came across.

It found a damaged Grigori first, a Comminus variant with ECM, which explained why it had registered as a medium mech, lancing lasers and ER PPC blasting into the mech’s legs with practiced ease, tanking the retaliatory MLM fire across the torso armor before cleaving the smaller mech’s cockpit in half with a blow from the monstrous hatchet it carried.

Clara laughed over the comms. She was having fun. She always had fun when she got to chop things. It was her favorite thing to do in the whole world!

Evidently, the Grigori pilot had called for aid, as a Malak came up behind her and started to stab at her with lasers, PPC, and, worryingly, two Inferno SRM rounds, bathing her mech in fire.

At least, she should have been worried, but Clara was past such early concerns as “heat” and “on fire”. She just wanted to cut things apart.

The big mech spun around, still wreathed in flame, and stitched large pulse laser fire across the smaller mech before it could withdraw. She evidently hit something important, as the SRM ammo touched off, blasting out of the blow off CASE II panels in a billowing fireball, and pushing the small mech forward with the force of the blast. The other mech stood back up, in time to meet the downward swing of Clara’s hatchet, the blow carving down deep into the mech’s torso, completely shearing off one side of the machine. The two halves crumpled to the sides in the snowy street.

The last thing the pilot of the other mech saw was the rapidly descending clawed foot of Clara’s mech.

“Ok Clara, that’s enough. Come on back.” the voice of Lt. John Smith, her “Piglet”, coming over her comms.

“Awwww…ok…” she replied, dejectedly. She was only just getting started.

“There will be more later.” the calm voice of the man she loved said.

Almost sulkily, and with one last burst of flame at the downed light mech, Clara lumbered her way back to join the retreating forces.

—

Back at Kinship FOB, the remainder of Barghest Company touches down, the Union class dropship and two Leopards landing on the landing strip and beginning to unload their cargo and mechs.

The assault mechs trundled around the FOB building, careful to avoid crushing anyone by mistake. The three heavies, the Marauder, Warhammer, and Warwolf followed. Last to join them was the superheavy T-Rex, the ground shaking more than usual with each step.

At the same time, the five Celestials made their way out of the union class dropship.

“This is Godkiller 1 to Garm 1, headed out, over.” Anya said, shocking herself with how, well, confident she sounded.

“Garm 1 to Godkiller 1, good luck and good hunting.” came Owen’s reply. “I’ll send your IFF tags to all friendly units, and if anyone shoots you, I’ll shoot them myself. Over”

“10 4, Godkiller 1 over and out.” Anya said, switching to her squad level comms. “Ok...lets move out.”

“Roger.”

“Ok!”

“Still think this is a dumb idea…”

“Understood…” The five Celestial mechs moved at good speed out of the FOB, attracting confused looks, but no fire at least from the defenders. Veering North, they took a route that brought them out of sensory range of most of the mechs present, before swinging west to the river, and then, back south…towards their objective.

@is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not @lt-chari @combined-arms-merc-groups @navcommrelay

#operation touchdown #story event #mechwarrior #battletech

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greatwyrmgold · 1 year ago

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Before I start the next stage of base-building, I need to plan.

No base screenshots this time. Just diagrams and rambling and ratios. But this post forces me to get my thoughts in order and turns them into something I can consult later, and hopefully someone else will find these ideas useful.

This chart, courtesy of Kirk McDonald's Factorio Calculator, shows most of the steps and ratios needed to get about a hundred SPM. That's what a single rocket silo with three productivity modules mark 3 can achieve, so it's a decent benchmark to aim for. (Mining, smelting, oil-cracking, and wire-assembling are over to the left of this part of the graph. But they're less important.

The lines are a mess, but the numbers are clear, especially if I switch back to the list. This requires something like 18 yellow belts of iron and copper, which is absurd. If I switch to red belts, we get a slightly less absurd nine belts of each (plus 3.6 of green circuits, 1.9 of plastic, and basically everything else <1).

Most of the copper and about a third of the iron are in green circuits. Nearly half of the iron goes into steel. Remove that, and I only need 1.2 belts of iron and 3.7 of copper, about half of which goes into low-density structure.

None of this accounts for non-science production, of course (e.g. automating those assembling machine 3's). But even so, that's a lot less resources than I was anticipating. I considered leaving a spot for trains to add more resources to the bus, but it looks like that's basically unnecessary—especially if I ship in green circuits and steel from elsewhere.

I'm still gonna do it, though.

Next, a diagram I made myself.

At the top are things I intend to put on the main bus. Maybe not coal and batteries, and stone bricks are only required for three things (furnaces for purple science, walls for gray, and miscellaneous furnaces/oil refineries) so they'll fall off the bus quickly enough, but the important thing is that they're excluded from the rest of the diagram.

Automation, logistic, and military science are simple enough. Automation is just bus ingredients, while logistic and military science are basic things, half of which I want to mass-produce anyway. At this stage of the bus, I can also build some basic factory stuff, like mining drills and assemblers Mk 2 and more red belts.

This probably sounds weird, but I think it makes sense to put production science next. (Red chips need to go somewhere earlier, but that's fine.) Its three products are disconnected from things made elsewhere, and it lets me get stone bricks off the bus early. Actually, I might just set up that stone unloading station here, to feed rails to purple science and bricks to wall/electric furnace/miscellaneous factory stuff production.

And chemical science is directly linked to utility science, because both use engines. Ideally I'd like one line of engine assemblers that gets split 2:1 between blue science and electric engines, with a few engines of each type getting stashed for making flame turrets and rocket silos and stuff.

Anyways, the rest of chemical science is straightforward, and utility science isn't much harder. The tricky bit will be setting up a circuit system that lets me set how many logistics and construction bots I want in the robot network, which is something I'll definitely do just to the side of the bus.

And then space science. But that's quite a way off.

All that in mind, let's get some figures.

We'll need almost four red belts of green chips, most of which are going into red and blue chip production. This will take something like four belts of iron and six of copper. Yeah, I should just make green chips off-site.

Green chips aside, phase 1 science requires less than a belt of copper and iron, plus coal for the grenades and stone bricks for the walls.

Phase 2 science requires those bricks, a couple belts of iron, half a belt of copper, and plastic. Also advanced circuits.

Phase 3 science requires like half a belt of copper and iron, plus plastic and sulfur.

Phase 4 requires a full belt of iron, a belt and a half of copper, and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff like batteries and plastic and oil.

Phase 5 (Space) requires most of a belt of iron, almost two belts of copper, two belts of green chips, a belt of plastic, and a bunch of other random stuff.

To keep this nice and expandable, I'd say that four belts each of iron and copper with refill stops between phases should be good. Excessive for one rocket, but when I want to run five rocket silos for infinite research I'll thank me.

Likewise, three belts of green chips (which get replaced by red and blue down the bus) sounds good. A belt of steel, one of gears, one or two belts of plastic, maybe a battery belt.

While I'm here, I'll throw together some thoughts about where to produce various factory buildings.

Electric miners, pumpjacks, red belts, chemical plants, power poles, inserters, and assembler 2's can all go in phase 1.

Furnaces and oil refineries need to go with the other stone brick stuff, at the phase 1/2 boundary.

Substations, roboports, and logistics chests can go in phase 2, after the red chips.

Blue belts can go in phase 3, alongside electric engines. They both need lubricant. Getting the red belts to the blue belts to lubricate them is gonna be interesting. Is that a low-volume train job or a long-distance bot job? Or an awkward belt job? Or maybe Renai Transportation has some silly solution?

Not much new in phase 4.

Assembler 3's share speed modules 1 with RCUs, so it makes sense to build them together. Shipping assembler 2's from one end of the bus to the other is like the belt thing, but more.

Explosives need coal, which if it's not on the bus are only going to grenades. But they also need sulfur from blue science. Hm.

Nuclear reactor stuff and rocket silos are best handled in temporary production setups. Or maybe even handcrafted.

Oh yeah, labs need to go somewhere too.

#factorio #planning #the factory must grow #my bases

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poshfind · 1 year ago

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Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: 2/$20 23rdSt. Light Silver-Gray Buttonfront Sateen Trench Coat S.

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seirette · 2 years ago

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Scenario Descriptions, Rambling & Art Notes

Read more about what's happening in the photos, and some technical notes, under the cut!

Links

Original Artwork this is talking about is here.

Winter Notes - You are here. For individual cropped photos, see Ko-Fi Post

Spring - TBA (Maybe if Kofi goal is reached, or if I get bored)

Summer - TBA (Kofi or if I get bored)

I'll update the links once everything is up!

Notes from Twitter

(Selected notes from my Twitter.)

This takes place after the events of the game. Susie, Noelle, Kris and Berdly have all started to change, either an obvious way or not. Change takes time. Sometimes you regress. Or sometimes you remain at a certain stage and that's fine for you. Whatever, that's life.

Not pictured: whenever they all had a fight

I started drawing the image set (4 images) 2 weeks before it was finished, so I didn't get to add the other HomeTown kids as cameos (Jock in Summer, Catti & Tem in Spring, MK and Snowy in Winter). I wanted more scenarios but I just blew up what I had to fill up the canvas more. But the hands in the original image block out so much anyway.

Scenario Descriptions

As some people have noticed, each Lightner has a season assigned to them.

Winter - Noelle

Spring - Susie

Summer - Berdly

Autumn - Kris

I chose Winter for Noelle. I like to imagine she can handle the cold. In the game it says she stands in front of the fridge in Sans' shop often, and she probably likes cool air. I took that at face value. But, in the game, it's Autumn and she wears a sweater-vest like thing. And some people said she might be staring at the fridge in Sans' shop because they print Missing Children on milk cartons (Dess).

At the very least Noelle seems to like the pretty snow things in the Cyber World. It's fun to imagine things about characters, isn't it? It also makes writing very tough.

Anyway, Noelle decided for her part of the trip, she wanted to see a snow festival somewhere outside of HomeTown. Kris and Berdly suggested snowboarding or skiing. Susie agreed to snowboarding (because it's close to Skateboarding...?). I didn't really get to draw a snow festival in the end... oops.

Extra scenarios I wanted to draw:

Ice Sculpture festival. Noelle sees some creatures and thinks about how some of the more artsy sculptures remind her of Cat Petterz 2. There is a Drinks Bar made of ice.

Snowball fight. Susie is defeated immediately purely due to having a larger hitbox. Kris is the smallest and good at dodging (or are they just good at deflecting?). Berdly comes up a bunch of mid-tier tactics, all of them fail but the last one works so he considers himself a winner anyway. Also Snowy and Monster Kid are here too. Snowy's head is a snowflake shape, each 'leaf' is loaded with a snowball each, and they are used like a chain gun/snowball machine gun like RATATATATATA...

Ice skating. Noelle is tries to teach Susie. Kris watches from afar while talking with Monster Kid and Snowy.

Quiet moments in the snow with friends watching the sunset. Just as a reminder I don't ship anything (I only explore friendships). So all the relationships/crushes that are in the game as of Chapter 2 are still intact, I haven't changed that part.

Photo 1

Do you think Susie and Berdly will become better 'friends' after Deltarune? At least in the timeline where you don't Kill Berdly, anyway. I think they could have some good slapstick moments. Honestly anything involving Berdly is great, unless you hate Berdly.

Anyway in the first photo, Kris, Susie and Berdly have decided to snowboard/ski down from the top of the mountain. Noelle is on a break. Susie is impressed by the scenery. She's with her friends, she's getting better at snow boarding. She's happy. They take a break together to stare at the mountains as the snow falls and melts on their noses. They don't mind the cold.

Kris takes the photo to preserve the moment for Susie. Also because if Berdly and Susie ever have a fight they can all stare at this photo together and remember the good times.

Photo 2

The gang reunite with Noelle at the bottom of the mountain. It was Noelle's idea to take the photo. Noelle also says she 'wants more photos with "everyone else"'. That doesn't happen, because if you look at the background, Berdly has fallen on his arse. They wait for him to travel down the mountainside, just to tell him they caught his epic fall on film.

The stickers on the snowboards don't mean anything - it is rental gear, the rental shop has a lot of duplicates of the same design. The stickers are just for the customers to tell them apart from other customers with the same design... I wanted to put funny numbers like 420...

Photo 3

On another trip down the mountain. It's just a cool shot of Kris. Berdly's about to stack it again. I'm sure Berdly isn't that bad at sports, but he's just not going well today. Despite the protective gear and snow goggles, you'll notice something about his glasses later.

Do you think Susie and Noelle also stacked it on this hill? Do you think Susie kept asking everyone to go up the mountain "one more time" so she could ace this hill? How do you think Berdly felt about having a bad day with Sports?

Clothes Part 1

For the clothes, Kris and Susie are wearing rentals. Originally they were both going to be wearing red. But I thought Kris wearing blue like their Dark World outfit was nice. I was thinking of giving Kris a custom outfit but I thought "Kris has some money after Deltarune but not THAT much money, so I'll give them a rental outfit". Actually none of these kids should have the money for 4 trips in a single year, OR a sabbatical, but I decided to stop thinking about that because I just want to see blorbos enjoying themselves.

Also I had to give SOMEONE overalls, so Berdly gets his custom bought overalls with a green neck warmer. Even though snowboarding looks cooler, he chooses to ski this trip. Noelle is also skiing. They're the

Super-Elegant Skiing Duo of HomeTown High

Photo 4 & Photo 5

Berdly's glasses are botched. I wonder what happened? Don't you think it's a good metaphor for something? You should think about what it means to you, because I can't do that for you.

Anyway, what's Kris doing? Sometimes you banter with Berdly, sometimes you help him build his dream body in a snowman. Originally the beak was going to be broken, and the whole statue was botched, with Kris snickering at Berdly.

But I decided Kris is so tired from snowboarding the previous day that they've decided to just chill out the day this photo was taken.

Susie snuck away past the trees. She misses Lancer. Kris and Noelle find her and insist on take a photo next to her masterpiece.

Photo 6

Noelle - food pic! It's not a very interesting food item, though. Some gimmicky food cart selling shaved ice with dark colored sprinkles that look like the hairy mountain behind them.

It's actually seaweed sprinkles. Kris eats moss in the Dark World, but they're not sure how they feel about seaweed on shaved ice. There's other syrup flavors in the cup too. It just tastes like an average savory-flavored sweet.

Susie was starting to feel cold, so Noelle and Kris gave her a beanie. But Susie loses the beanie somehow, shortly afterward. Susie, running low on cash, asks if she can share with Berdly. Once purchased, Noelle sees them sharing the shaved ice and wishes she offered to share first.Kris regrets buying a whole serving at all.

Clothes Part 2

Berdly: He gets surprisingly neutral clothes. Also I thought earmuffs would match the ear things he has in the Dark World. Also a bird needing earmuffs but the human not wearing them is hilarious to me.

Kris: I like it when people paint Kris' Dark World scarf as a pink scarf with purple shading, or vice-versa. But it wasn't obvious enough so I just went for the other fandom interpretation of "stripy scarf". By the way, I think it would be REALLY COOL if the scarf was actually a sweater. Like, when you take off the sweater but you didn't actually take it off completely, so it's just stuck around your neck. Anyway that's why Kris has a Stripy scarf and grey mitts. I also took some time to think about what would look 'gender'. But I'm no good at fashion. I'm going f*cking insane over Kris Dreemurr.

Susie is wearing the same pants here, but she has thermal wear underneath. She just gets the cheapest warmest jacket possible (the type that old people all seem to wear).

Noelle (see below): I'll talk about it more in the Spring Anniversary image, but I have a hard time thinking about what kind of clothes Noelle would pick. Like, in the game, is she wearing clothes that her mom picked for her? Anyway she's wearing a skirt and turtleneck here. She wears the same skirt in Spring.

Overall I wanted to give them all neutral/normal looking clothing.

Photo 7 & Photo 8

Last part of the trip. They have dinner at some place that gets lots of pictures and reviews on social media. Also, I was going to draw them drinking mulled wine. I have always heard of stories of people going on ski trips and drinking mulled wine at a random house. I've never drunken mulled wine. But the imagery of being red faced and merry in the snow seems very warm to me.

I decided not to draw them drinking alcohol because if it turns out any of these Lightners have bad experiences/memories of it, I'd be pretty sad... By the way, in Australia you can legally start to drink alcohol at 18. Please consume alcohol safely. Anyway, now the Lightners are just waiting for food in this picture

The cat and rabbit in the background are dating.

Photo 9 (not pictured in above image, scroll to top)

The main picture is the last photo of the trip. Noelle's expression seems flustered, doesn't it? Originally Noelle was going to be tipsy and "OH SUSIE YOU CAN'T LET MY MOM SEE THIS PHOTO" but I changed my mind with the alcohol. Now she's happy Susie's taking a photo, but also been caught off-guard. Okay but she's holding a cup, she could totally be having a sippy. The reality is that I drew this picture but I still don't know. I'll let you decide.

By the way, just to let you know, Berdly is doing most of the driving in these trips. Kris can drive a little but isn't able to drive internationally yet. I don't know about Susie and Noelle (I don't think Susie could have afforded the lessons, but I do like the idea of Susie driving Kris around in college due to REASONS). If it turns out I'm totally wrong... whatever, I don't care, it's not shown in these images anyway so you can assume they took public transport.

I think the most "drama" is in the Spring set of images.

Art Notes

First off let's look at the thumbnails.

My handwriting is passable here. Usually it looks like squiggles. The main ideas are pretty much the same, but you can see that I changed Susie's hairstyle back to her default hair style. Also Kris was originally laughing at Berdly's broken snowman.

Most of these thumbnails (background photos) were drawn in Cartoon/comic style - to save time... more on that later.

Row 1 (see below): For the main image, I drew 2-3 passes (Thumbnail, rough sketch, maybe extra for clothes, then line art). Berdly looked awful at first so I redrew him a few times. Actually I'm not so happy with Susie's snoot but since this was the first canvas, I was worried about time and didn't want to deal with her snoot blocking out Noelle, and I wanted Susie's face to still be in frame... so I left it.

Row 2: Left - without color filters, Right - with filters. (It might not look that different... oops)

Since I use grisaille, it's kind of like shading with black... nothing wrong with that if you want that look, but if I want the colors to pop more, I add a gradient map...

Row 3: Nothing special. Just two layers of gradient maps... I literally just downloaded whatever the popular gradient map packs were, flicked through a bunch and picked what I liked. The first one is set to overlay, the second one the instructions in Japanese roughly says "Set this gradient map to ~20% Color" so that's why I've set the layer to those settings.

Row 4: Left most Susie - this is the original painted image with the color gradient maps, before Tone Curve and Level Correction.

I wanted to imitate the coloring in photos. The polaroid photos I've seen, the first thing I think of is "Flash was used so all the highlights are blown out", and that the black shadow areas are never #FFFFFF amount of dark... so that's why, in the Tone Curve, I lifted the leftmost (axis at 0) up a notch. Anyway you can see the effect is lower contrast by a bit. Instead of using a Tone Curve you can also just use some layer effects (e.g., Exclusion layer blend mode or whatever). It doesn't really matter just do whatever you feel like doing, I can't stop you.

The next step I added Level correction (just to play around, honestly). Actually this added back some contrast. Whatever, I just did what looked nice...

Row 5: This is the layer composition.

Characters (By the way Berdly looks great without glasses).

Lights (1 layer of boxes of random colors, then I duplicated, blurred, and set to glow/light blend modes)

Trees with snow clumps

Smog (used some smoke/cloud brush set for this)

Main background flats

When I do paintings like this, the characters are always painted in grisaille. I have a few posts with WIPs on this blog showing grisaille stuff, but anyway I'll talk about it in the Spring Anniversary image details. If you want to see that, and also what the hell is going on in the Spring photos, you can donate to my Kofi to reach the goal.......

A nice thing to note about the Anniversary artwork as a whole is that the characters are mostly close to the camera, so I can just wing the background (i.e., I don't have to draw buildings or architecture TOO detailed). This is great because I was in a rush!

For the remaining images, I knew they were going to be blurred. So I just drew the characters in cartoon comic style that I use. This means for the characters I can just grab the palette I already have (don't have to spend any time picking colors).

The backgrounds were still (roughly) painted.

Row 6: Some images without the filters and layer effects. You can see the characters don't fit well into the background without them...!

Row 7 (Left): Polaroid layers

Polaroid Frame

Multiply - shadow layer of the Polaroid frame

Background - I just winged this

Set - Lineart and flats.

Multiply layer - shadows for the Set above. I have 2 shadow colors which are just light and dark purple (you can see my palette in Row 6).

Row 7 (Right): Photo layers - not much to say here, same as previous, just a more background oriented photo...

Details I really wanted to add but skipped them due to time shortage:

Extra lighting (highlights)

Blurring items (e.g., far away background images, whatever is 'not in focus, and so on...)

Drawing other Lightner characters into the scenarios!

MORE FOOD PICTURES!

Fixing wonky anatomy (even the 'chibi' anatomy)

I think I wrote too much. If you got this far, thanks for reading so much :)

Also if anything I make (comics, etc) makes you happy feel free to tip me/buy me a coffee 😊

#deltarune #kris dreemurr #susie deltarune #berdly #noelle holiday #art notes #kofi #with readmore

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elidoesntbreathwee · 2 years ago

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-Steddie Coffee Shop AU-

Eddie walked into a coffee shop, after getting about, no sleep the night before. He usually made his own coffee but the coffee machine was broken at the trailer and neither he, nor Wayne had gotten around to fixing it. He also was way too tired to make coffee, let alone breakfast so he decided to come here instead.

It was a small coffee shop, even for Hawkins, but it was Eddie's favorite, maybe because it had the least amount of people. He walked through the door and the small bell rung above him. The lady at the counter greeted him as he walked toward her.

"Hey, what can I get you?" She said as she leaned on the counter.

"Robin Buckley?" Eddie questioned, he'd seen her in band at school.

"That's my name." She smiled and pointed to her name tag. She was about to ask something, most likely what Eddie had wanted to order, but before she could, she was called from the back.

"Just a minute!" She called back

"No," Her boss came out from the back and said "right now. I'll have Steve serve this guy."

"Sorry," She smiled, falsely "Steve will be here to take your order in just a moment, but I have to go take care of something." She turned and followed her boss, sighing dramatically.

Eddie waited there, wondering why this had to happen the morning he was so sleep deprived, for about a minute or two (2), until another employee came out. Eddie's jaw dropped

"Steve Harrington!" Eddie wasn't entirely sure why he was shocked, maybe because that was a super rich guy working in a bit of a dump, or just because that was Steve Harrington.

"Can I get you something or would you rather gawk?" Steve said irritably, clearly not having it that day either.

"Yeah sorry, just a black coffee, please."

"Mk, a dollar forty-five ($1.45)"

Eddie handed him a dollar, a quarter, two (2) dimes, and a nickel and when he put it in Steve's hand he looked up at Eddie, looked him right in the eyes.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes?" Eddie was confused, he gave Steve the exact amount, what had he done wrong

"Oh my god," Steve muttered under his breath "Whatever."

Eddie got his coffee and went to one of the tables next to a window, near the counter. Steve stood there, messing with the register, waiting for more customers to come in, but Eddie couldn't stop looking at him. Steve had changed since second semester of his senior year, Eddie knew that, but he seemed different, Eddie could feel it.

"You really like staring, huh?"

"Huh?"

"You like staring." Steve, who had walked up to the table Eddie was sitting at, said to him.

"Oh my god! I- I'm sorry, I guess I was blanking out and I was staring, I'm so sorry! I shouldn't have blanked out, I-" Eddie panicked, and probably would've gone on forever if Steve hadn't interrupted

"It's fine. I don't really care."

"What? Wait... really?" Eddie was genuinely confused

"Yeah, it's whatever. You we're blanking out anyways so who cares." Steve said tiredly, and just then he closed his eyes and fell forward, toward Eddie, who caught him before Steve could hurt himself on the table or anything else.

"Steve? Steve you ok? Steeve?" Eddie shook Steve slightly.

Robin come out form the back to tell Steve that she could take the register again, when she saw him collapsed onto Eddie, who was still trying to wake Steve up. She ran over to them

"What happened?!"

"I- I don't know, he just came over here and then he, i dont know? Fell asleep?" Eddie looked up at Robin, brows furrowed.

"He needs to go home." Robin thought for a moment "Do you mind taking him? I dont get off for lunch for until 3, since it's summer." Robin explained

"Sure, you sure he wont freak out or something though?"

"Why would he?"

"Falling asleep at work and the next thing you know you're in your house with Eddie Munson? I'd freak out if i where him." Eddie brought up a good point so why was he on his way to the Harrington's house with Steve, asleep in his van.

When they got to Steve's house, Eddie shook him awake to get him out. Steve, half asleep, walked towards his front door, leaning on Eddie for support. They got to the door and Steve sleepily handed Eddie his house key, which he reluctantly took, and unlocked the door.

Steve pointed to the couch and Eddie helped him to get over to it to lay down. Steve was situated on the couch, so Eddie left the key on the coffee table and started toward the door.

"Don't go."

"What?"

Eddie turned around to see Steve sitting up, trying to get off the couch, though he was having a lot of trouble due to how tried he was. Eddie walked quickly over to the couch and sat Steve back down.

"Hey, you gotta get sleep, alright."

"Stay." Steve held Eddie's wrist

"What do you mean, Stevie?" Eddie's face softened

"Stay with me. Please."

Eddie smiled. "I'm here."

-The End-

AN: here's a ficlet since my Chrissy and Eddie is taking way longer than i thought it'd take :P but i need it to be perfect becuz theyre besties and stuff and i love them :> ALSO im very aware that this kinda steers away from the coffee shop idea lmao, but i hope u like it anyways :)

#steddie #steve #eddie #steveddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #st #eddie x steve #steve and eddie #steve stranger things #eddie stranger things #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #steddie fanfic #steddie fanfiction #steddie au #coffee shop au

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yellowocaballero · 2 years ago

Note

Whos your favorite of the moon boys to write? And to read? Do you think we’ll ever get a second season— a good second season? I miss Steben

Steben....

And I have a lot of favoritism for Jake, but that's because he's a bit of an OC hahahaha. I could just make him into exactly the kind of guy I really enjoyed writing, and give him the exact stories I enjoy the most. I designed him to be kind of a Walking Situation, whose personality causes the most issues possible wherever he goes, and that makes writing him super fun (the other character I've written who falls into this box and who is as a result very fun and easy to write: Leia Organa). And because I can make him such a versatile character, I can design him to work really well with other characters I find super fun to write like the Heroes For Hire. (Also - I don't like ANY of the HFH characters except Matt. Like, I'm a fan of none of them. They're just great to write).

To read - I don't read MK fic! So dunno. It just depends on the skill of the author.

As for the second season - lmfao so when I first read that there wasn't gonna be a season 2 I remembered what Isaac said about not wanting to get wrapped up in Disney shit again and said "Good for Oscar Isaac lmfao, rather have no MK2 than that poor man trapped in Disney machine". However it does seem like he's taking other Disney projects so thanks, sell-out. I read something saying we weren't, I read something saying we were later on, I guess we are, I dunno. I'm genuinely not too fussed. By the time a second season comes out I'll have probably hitched my wagon to a different media conglomerate IP.

#was never an mk stan tbh.#just like writing the most mentally ill guy.#my asks

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skellebonez · 4 years ago

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SO, remember that thing you wrote a while back, about Monkey King and Mk time traveling back to the JTTW time period?

Link to said thing: https://skellebonez.tumblr.com/post/647766968590581760/18-for-present-wukong-and-mk-to-accidentally-time

THIS? RIGHT WELL, I HAVE HAD IT OPEN IN MY TABS FOR A REALLY LONG TIME AND WOULD LIKE TO GIVE YOU AN OPENING TO CONTINUE WITH IT IF YOU'D LIKE: PROMPTS 34 and 41

So. Time travel is funky. This is set post-Special, immediately pre-season 2. But has spoilers for events up to S2E7. For reasons. Side bar: sometimes time travel comes with some fun side effects. Fun for the viewer. Less fun for the people experiencing them.

Truth be told, I forgot they were even here./Can you teach me how to do that?

"Won't this cause some kind of... I-I dunno, time paradox?" MK asked in a harsh whisper as they followed the traveling group at the back of the line. "Or is this gonna be some kind of 'you changed one thing and now two timelines exist' kind of deal?"

"I genuinely have no idea," Wukong said with a sigh, digging at the uncomfortable but familiar feeling in his ear and trying to keep his voice down as much as possible. He was honestly surprised that it had taken MK this long to ask this particular question, but then again... they had other things to worry about. "I don't remember this, but that may not even matter. I've around for centuries, Bud, but even I have no idea how thing works for us."

"That is not a comforting sentence."

It had been a little over two days since the mentor and student had found themselves thrown backwards in time a few centuries away from home. And Sun Wukong could tell that MK was starting to get more and more frustrated as time had gone on. To be fair, they had made little progress. And there was... another reason... multiple other reasons. But most importantly, there wasn't exactly a power source they could plug the machine into that would give them enough juice to send them home, at least not unless they chance by a demon with lightning powers that Wukong didn't remember. No, instead they had to wait until they hit a storm.

One that was more than another two days walk away.

The young man did his best to not let it show, however. Most likely because of who they were traveling with.

His younger self lead the group, pointedly not looking back at them and keeping a watchful eye for demons that the elder Wukong knew would not come. He dared not bring this knowledge up, though, not knowing if MK had a point about that paradox. He didn't seem to trust the completely, but there was someone else he trusted.

Behind him was his former Master. The monk Tripitaka, Tang Sanzang himself, on the back of the horse formed dragon Bai Long Ma. Bai Long Ma had said nothing, as they were wont to do, and seemed to mostly ignore the two of them unless they were loud. Mast- Sanzang. He had insisted that the elder Wukong and MK call him Sanzang. Probably to help differentiate who was speaking to him if he could not see the two immortal monkeys, and also because MK kept trying to figure out which title to use for the monk and he took pity on him. Sanzang, after a hour's long explanation and from proof via MK's phone and knowledge of past adventures none should know of (and one very interesting game of staff trading between the two monkeys for a moment where the younger Wukong realized it was indeed the same staff).

Sanzang had not mentioned his crying when they met. Neither had his younger self. Or MK.

Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing took up the rear. Wujing had not said much to the two of them, but he was nice enough. Suspicious of them, but nice. He put more faith in Sanzang and younger Wukong (perhaps he should call him something else in his head) than his companion.

Bajie didn't trust them as far as he could throw them, that was clear from the way he kept glancing back at the duo with daggers in his eyes. He was immediately unhappy with their new travel companions and... Wukong realized with a sad jolt that he actually missed that. At the time he only found Bajie's contrary nature to his own to be frustrating but now... now he hadn't heard that in 500 years and he could see that while it may have been misguided at times (many times) it was born of a sense of self preservation and a want to protest Sanzang.

Even if he contradicted himself at times as well.

"You two doing ok back there, older me and Kid?" Younger Wukong called back suddenly.

"Yup, just. Hanging." MK yelled back, tone as terse and done as it had been for the last day. "Not like I can do anything else." The second bit was muttered under his breathe, most likely in the hopes even his mentor couldn't hear him. He was wrong.

Wukong felt... bad. Because he was the primary source of this rotten mood.

The staff digging into his ear for the first time in centuries was a reminder of that. An agreement between himself and his student to not bring up any undue suspicion and questions that would take time they may not have to get back home. They'd agreed that the group would also call him Kid, since MK wasn't as fond of the others calling him Bud for some reason, and the name was just... a smidgen to close to Monkey King to not raise similar questions. It was also a reminder that Wukong had let slip in a follow up conversation, away from prying ears, about why this may or may not be really necessary that he had planned to leave the next day in present time.

MK hadn't been happy since. Not with him at least.

"Bajie, remember to ask them how they are doing from time to time. Please?" Sanzang insisted in front of them.

"Truth be told, I forgot they were even here," Bajie lied.

Bajie glowered down at Wukong, throwing the fruit and wrapped rice packages in his general direction and not caring whether he caught it or not. There was a soft and disappointed cry of his name from Sanzang from the other side of the camp.

"Master and the stupid Monkey may trust you," he snorted, ignoring the call and looking between Wukong and MK. "But I don't. If you even so much as set one little toe out of like I will re-"

"Rend our souls asunder with your mighty 9 Toothed Rake, yeah," MK sighed as he used some of the water from his cup to wash the berries thrown at him. "You're Zhu Ganglie, Zhu Bajie, Tiānpéng Yuánshuài, commander-in-chief of 80,000 Heavenly Navy Soldiers. You will kick our asses. We know."

For a whole second Zhu Bajie looked genuinely surprised and... kind of impressed.

Then he scoffed again and made his way back to the group of five and watched them from the edges of his vision with less suspicion and more curiosity than before.

"Mei was right when she said he was kind of like Pigsy," MK noted, popping a berry into his mouth.

"When was that?" Wukong asked, doing much the same.

His student froze, looking down at his hands for a moment as if trying to remember something. "... not important. Let's just eat and get some rest, like Sanzang told us to."

It didn't take a Great Sage to realize something was wrong.

Wukong said nothing.

"Kid, we told you to stay back with Master!" Wujing shouted as MK peaked his head around the rock he and the monk were taking shelter behind.

"I know!" MK snapped, growling as he ducked back down and presumably curled in on himself. "ARGH I feel useless!"

Wukong winced at his tone, feeling bad. MK wasn't useless, to be fair, but without his staff and no backup weapons he was fighting up a creek without a paddle as it were.

"You're not useless, and you're protecting Tripitaka!" He shouted, letting out a yelp as he narrowly avoided a hit from a demon that should not even be here. Or, some kind of time anomaly mockery of a large demon. An enormous smoke or shadow creature that was far too familiar for his own liking. Not the same, something possibly cobbled together from time itself.

"Wow, uh, future me you're not doing so hot!" Younger Wukong said with a raise of his eyebrow as he blocked a strike with much more ease. "Aren't I supposed to get better with age? Like a handsome fine wine?"

"I'm a bit RUSTY ok!?" He snapped, slicing off one of the shadow creature's cloth tassels to watch it flicker away. "Haven't been many demons to fight!"

He heard a scoff from behind the rock before he felt the giant fist punch him into it. And through it. A Wukong sized hole between student and old master. He realized too late that he had lost his grip on his staff as it flew into the air above them.

"Alright, that's enough!"MK shouted, and before Wukong could even move to stop him the Monkie Kid had jumped into the rock and reached up.

"KID DO YOU HAVE A DEATH WISH!?" Bajie shouted in horror as he made to rush back and tackle him out of the way. He hadn't moved fast enough either.

None of them had, before MK caught the staff as if it was as light as a feather and twirled it around himself before extending it and launching himself at the shadow creature with a scream of rage and frustration and landing what would have been the killing blow had it not clearly been something not living in the first place.

It dissipated much as the piece cut off before it did, leaving MK to... give a confused yelp and fall into a heap on the ground. The staff fell to his side as he clutched his head and yelled in pain from a source Wukong could not see.

"Kid!" Wukong screamed, moving faster than he had during the entire fight to his student's side. "Kid, shit, MK! What happened?"

"MK?" Sanzang and his younger self asked softly in tandem as Wujing and Bajie watched on, all moving closer. But not too close, giving the two room to move.

MK didn't answer. He sat up, holding his head in his hands as he breathed deeply and tried to keep from screaming again before everything just... stopped.

His sat on his knees, hand hanging limply at his sides as his true sight shone in his eyes and he looked on forward blankly.

"What's... who is he?" Younger Wukong asked slowly as he turned to his older self. "What is he?"

"The Hero and the Warrior were like the Sun and the Moon..." MK muttered softly all of a sudden, just loud enough for the group surrounding him. His voice was slurred, almost like he was in a trance. "Their light a protective glow shining upon the world..."

"MK, where did you-" Wukong tried to ask instead of answering his younger self as he slowly stepped forward, cautiously, but MK continued on as if he had not heard him at all.

"Together there was nothing that could stop the two of them. Either in the Celestial Realms... or on Earth. As time went on, the Hero attained power beyond comprehension. As the Hero's light grew so too did his shadow and soon the Warrior was cast in that shadow. In the darkness, the Warrior was forgotten by the Hero..."

MK immediately slumped forward as he fell unconscious.

"MK!"

"His name is MK... and he's the Monkie Kid... My successor," Wukong finished as he laid a fresh cold wet cloth over his student's forehead. After he had collapsed it became obvious something was seriously wrong with MK, high fever burning him up quickly. They were only just close enough to a town for him to grab him and the staff and rush off with barely a shouted back explanation of "find us at the inn" to the rest of their group. "We thought that... keeping that a secret might prevent any kind of... weird time travel... stuff."

Wukong sighed. His explanation was weak even to his own ears. Excuses. Ways to make things easier for him.

He felt worse than he had just the day before.

His student laid unconscious still, fever burning even after the medicine from the town doctor had been given to him with water carefully. The only thing Wukong could think of was the staff. MK wasn't invincible like he was, maybe contact with it had caused a reaction from the time travel that couldn't affect the immortal.

"Why would you need a successor, Wukong?" Sanzang asked after they sat in silence for a moment.

Bajie handed Wukong the mortar and pestle he had been working with to prepare more medicine, something to add to tea when MK woke up. The pig demon had not questioned him once since they arrived, only grabbed what Wukong was trying to mix poorly himself and listened.

Bai Long Ma had changed into a human form, one he had rarely seen, and sat beside Wujing. They both also listened.

His younger self looked at MK in a mix of wonder and confusion and horror and Wukong could not blame him. The idea of a successor... he must have known himself what that meant even if no one else did.

"I hope I don't have to tell you," he said softly. He didn't look away from MK, even as Sanzang laid a comforting hand on his back. "And I don't want to risk what telling you might do..."

No one questioned him after that.

When Bajie prepared the next bowl of medicine for MK, Wukong took a chance he never had with the demon he once considered like his brother.

"Can you teach me how to do that? Properly?"

Bajie did.

"Monkey King?" Came the hoarse rasp of MK's voice ringing through the room, and Wukong shot up from where he was watching the stars in an instant.

"I'm here, MK," He said softly, still soft, not wanting to hurt his student in case hie head ached. "How do you feel?"

"Dead, but only from the neck up," MK groaned out, and Wukong let out a relieved sigh. He wasn't sick enough to not joke around at least. "Where are we?"

"The town we need to be in," Wukong answered, quickly working on adding the medicine into some now (sadly) cold tea. He had hoped MK would wake much sooner. "Storm is tonight... you've been asleep for a whole day. Hopefully getting you home with this medicine in you will make you feel better, you uh... you weren't doing so great before-"

"What happened to Macaque?" MK asked suddenly, looking for all the world like he had no idea why he would even ask that question to begin with. "Not the battle your younger you had. Before that. In the story. Sun and Moon. Please, I... I want to know. Just... just tell me something, for once."

Wukong froze, fur bristling and stiff and this was not the conversation he wanted to have with his student right now. This is not the conversation he should be able to physically have with his student right now because MK should have no way of knowing anything like this at all. But he had. He'd recited the story he'd heard before word for word from... Macaque.

This was not the time for easy outs. Not anymore.

"I've made a lot of mistake, MK," He started, lifting his student's head onto his lap to help him sit up for the drink. "And a lot of them are ones I didn't think you would have to know about. But Macaque... it's complicated, I know that now. I didn't back then."

MK sipped the tea but said nothing, only made a face at the taste of the medicine.

"We were friends, once. Back on Mount Huaguo before I went to the Celestial Realm, he became immortal in... other ways to my own. I was trapped for 500 years under a mountain without him, no one came to see me so... I guess he was never able to find me. Or he waited thinking I would eventually come back," Wukong tried not to think about how that meant he could have had trust in his friend and not for other reasons he had assumed for so long. "You know the story of the White Bone Spirit from our journey? How Bajie got me banished?"

Wukong couldn't help but chuckle. Oh, he'd been so mad at Bajie for so long for that. He still was, in many ways. But given what happened to him later on in the journey Wukong couldn't hold a grudge.

"Yeah you-" MK coughed a little, probably from not talking for a whole day and a sore throat. "You went back to Mount Huaguo."

"And to Macaque," Wukong continued. "For the first time in 500 years."

"I bet he was angry."

"No..." Wukong disagreed, shaking his head and thinking back. "No, he... wasn't. Not at first. He was ecstatic I came back. The Hero and Warrior of Mount Huaguo back together again, just like old times. But it wasn't like old times. I was already different, I knew how I treated others including the monkeys on my mountain hadn't been the best. And when Bajie came to bring me back... I couldn't help but wanting to leave back to the journey. Part of it was to get the fillet off, but part of it was because... I realized I cared for the others. I wanted to see the journey through with them."

"Macaque thought you were abandoning him," MK said after a moment, eyes widening. "That's why he took on your identity. He wanted... revenge? For you to have no reason to leave again?"

"I think he just wanted what we used to have," Wukong said with a frown. "I've been running from him for so long... over another 500 years. I've made so many mistakes in my life MK, but I think not trying to get him to come with us or trying to properly explain what I was doing... may have been the worst."

"... The warrior was never forgotten by the Hero after all," MK said softly before drifting back to sleep.

"No," Wukong agreed, though he knew he was not heard. "No, the Hero never forgot. The Hero never will, not completely. Even if it hurts."

The storm came on schedule. The machine was charged.

Over the day they came back their memories of the trip back in time faded into a distant thought, one that both mentor and student soon forgot to fear the loss of.

By the next day they had forgotten. Time had fixed itself.

But not completely.

The Hero never forgot completely, after all. There was something telling him in the back of his mind to check more on his student. He remembered a hand on his back that should not have been there. He knew how to mix something he never had before.

Neither did the Warrior, uninvolved in this adventure as he may be. He had plans.

And the one between them, with no title to himself, didn't completely forget either. He recalled feeling warm and safe. His head was on someone's lap. There were berries and someone not unlike one of his father figures.

The memories of what happened lingered, quiet, uncalled but emotions still there.

A short time later the one between felt that a play he went to was strangely familiar to him and needed to rush out before his head began to ache in memories he didn't recall.

"So um... what happened to him? The Warrior?"

The answer was somewhere in the back of his mind. If only he could remember.

#monkie kid #lego monkie kid #spoilers #gen fic #time travel fic #mk #qi xiaotian #sun wukong #monkey king #six eared macaque #(mentioned)#Tripitaka #tang sanzang #zhu bajie #sha wujing #bai long ma #prompt fill #LONG AS HELL

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the-fourth-knower · 3 years ago

Text

wat if Infinite was a robot

this is just a for fun type thing.

Mecha Sonic, Mk. 3 "Infinite"

Color shceme of iNifnite plus some blues. Maybe a gold here and there.

Incorporate parts of Infinite's design in? beyond colors

Personality thoughts

Loyal to Eggman, naturally. But arrogant

Afraid of no longer being useful to Eggman, takes care to keep Eggman from finding about mistakes he has made > Doesn't mention Sonic was beating his ass > Panics when he realizes that the Rookie has a Ruby prototype, attempts to destroy them but is stopped by arrival of Knuckles > Does not tell Eggman about this for fear he will be.. "Modified". he knows what happened to previous failures.

Sadistic, knows he's damn near untouchable (until he isn't)

Vengeful. Manifests towards the latter half as he singles out the Rookie in Imperial Tower and on > attempts to stop them from stopping the Sun > this fails, he intercepts them as they're falling from them and carries them into Eggman's fortress > He's screwed no matter what now in his eyes. So before he is, he'll tear apart the one responsible. > Level of running the fuck away from him until you get a hit in at the end > Final fight between Mecha and Rookie, then Sonic joins > Becomes convinced that if he kills Sonic then he will not be slated for scrap. It's at 2 for 1 > Even as he lies scattered in pieces and the ruby removed, he mocks Sonic and the Rookie. Last words are hysterical laughter

Sarcastic and mocking. Only person he does not do it with is Eggman, usually.

Sycophantic towards Eggman. Stems from fear that Eggman will have no more use for him

Mutual contempt for Metal Sonic.

Attacks

In addition to ruby stuff like normal infinite he is a Metal

Spinny circle arm death attack

Gun. both laser/machine gun and fuck off rockets > rockets maybe are ruby stuff

Making a circle of himself before they all attack. They pause to laugh allowing you to find the real one and smack him.

Lazor beam. (Yes, the beam attacks in Imperial Tower would be this Mecha trying to fry you.

If you are close to him he will start slashing with his claws. > In fact he will start straight up blocking attacks this way, until he gets hit by something else. (Sonic homing attacking for blocks, Rookie grapple attacking).

Robot does not necessarily need to be a Mecha Sonic, but c'mon. Eggman would do it

#Knower rambles #what if #this is just a collection of random thoughts lol #Sonic #sth #Sonic the Hedgehog #feel free to share thoughts on it

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cryinginthebackseat · 4 years ago

Text

you’ve got more poison than sugar - part i

AO3 part ii

Fandom: Call Of Duty

Pairing: Russell Adler x Bell

Words: 4.009

Summary: Russell Adler should have known better that it wouldn’t take an entire nation or continent to bring him to his knees.

Warnings: just swearings, sexual tension, blood, mentions of past abuse and brainwashing. adler being that manipulative asswipe like usual.

Author’s note: i don't know what i'm doing. one moment, i was watching the walkthrough of the new call of duty game, found myself curious, acutely curious by that guy with the scars and shades on- a younger, shadier (no pun intended) Robert Redford in Spy Game and oh my... fast forward to 2 weeks later, here we are.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

A house somewhere on foreign soil,

Where ageless lovers call,

Is this your goal, your final needs,

Where dogs and vultures eat,

Committed still I turn to go.

I put my trust in you.

A Means To An End - Joy Division (1980)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It's mystifying how little she talks. Or when she does, it's always in fragments. Like a crossword puzzle in your local newspaper, but several letters are missing. He initially thought maybe MK-Ultra fucked her head or worse, if it hasn't worked at all, but the more he watches her, the more he realizes it's just the way she is. And it's ironic because he named her Bell. He expected her to chime like a goddamn goldfinch yet here they are.

But he won't be fazed. Russell Adler is a man who's stopped at nothing in getting what he wanted before, he sure as hell won't stop now for a close-mouthed science project.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“We've got a job to do, Bell."

It intrigues him, every time, the way the words trigger something deep within her psyche, the way her eyes change, her body stands a little straighter, like a machine ready to function at his disposal. It reminds Adler of one of those cartoons he watched when he was a kid about wizards and magic words, except there are no musical dance numbers playing in the background or a talking cricket perching on his shoulder. This is his power over her, over the USSR, over Perseus. That monstrous filth. It really does take a beast to tame another.

Although he surmises calling Bell one would be superfluous.

She barely looks like one, but Adler knows too well than to underestimate her. Just because Bell hasn’t shown her set of claws, that doesn’t mean she’s harmless, delicate, like a miniature China Doll in his breast pocket.

Bell never offered him her reply before, but now, now, she nods, head almost bows, obedient pretty thing, and says:

“Yes, Adler.”

So it goes.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It takes West Berlin for Adler to realize she’s left-handed.

She wears her watch on her right hand, smokes with that same said hand only when she’s writing or moving her pieces for an impromptu late-night game of chess against Lazar. And she always wears her gloves all the time- leather, black, lined with silk and pretty, small buttons on the cuffs, covering those striking red nails underneath. Whether it is for the theatrics or an old habit of hers, he can't really tell.

He doesn’t know why he begins to take notice of these mundane details about Bell, but rationalizes because he’s never been in the same room with this version of her, post-brainwash Bell, for more than 10 minutes. And for all intents and purposes, there’s still a lot of question marks surrounding her character; who is she? Where did she come from? What is her connection to Perseus?

Are they in a possession of a walking, breathing bomb about to destroy them all or the West’s only salvation?

He supposes he’ll find out soon enough.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Adler hears Bell from his table, typing busy on the computer- barely blinking- all soaked up in that caffeine-infused energy at 1 am. She's always like that, he learns, when it comes to working, always with that steel determination, pulling out all the stops as long as it gets the job done- that Soviet discipline at it's finest.

Reminds him a little of himself when he's young.

Adler walks up to her.

“You done for the night?” A shake of her head is her only response. He sighs. “You should go home, Bell.”

“You go. I’ll lock up behind you,” Bell replies, low and monotone; that youthful stubborn.

If she was any other person, he would probably commend her for such fierce willpower, but she is Bell, the walking conundrum, his ace in the hole. Call him paranoid, but the idea of her having the safehouse for herself does nothing but raises every alarm in his head.

“No, we’re going home,” he says instead, tone brooking no argument and she frowns at the screen, her fingers stop moving then looks up at him with those goddamn empty eyes. "Come on, it's late anyway."

She doesn't say anything. Adler wishes he could read her mind- or crack that lovely skull on the back of her head, dissect her brain, learn its secrets and answers.

Adler has his gun with him. It wouldn’t take long. A quick, true shot to the heart to keep the brain intact. He’d have Hudson contact one of his people inside BND and he'd deliver the brain himself if he has to. They could do it. He heard they’ve been studying inmates' brains for decades now, anyway.

Before he has a chance to entertain the idea further, though, Bell nods once and rises up from her seat.

Bell walks past him. Her scent, like honeysuckle on ice, hits him like an uppercut in the face. Adler inhales, as if against his will.

He thinks he could get drunk on it.

“Hop in. I’ll drive you back to the hotel,” he says once they’re outside, regretting the decision the moment the words left his lips, but he knows he can’t just leave her on her own at this late hour.

The irony isn’t lost on him, though, considering he just thought about unspooling her brain a few minutes ago.

Bell complies without a protest. Getting inside the passenger seat, wordless still, fingers toying with the radio. An angry, krautrock music comes blaring all over his car. Adler winces, but at least the riot is loud enough to muffle the one's brewing in his head.

"How's your memory these days?"

Bell shrugs. "Nihil novi sub sole." There's nothing new under the sun.

Good, he muses. The least she knows about herself the better.

Though that doesn't mean he's out of the woods yet.

"Listen, from now on, I want you to keep me informed if there's any new progress about your memory or if you've developed any new symptoms. I want to know everything." He steals a sidelong glance at her, making sure she is listening (she always does, but Adler needs an excuse)

(An excuse for what?)

"Alright, Bell?"

"Of course," replies the woman in question.

"Good." Adler shifts his attention back to the road. "Good." Taking a long drag, he considers trying to appeal to her sentimental side. It's not something you'd improvise last minute- at least not with someone you brainwashed to believe you are her mentor/confidant for the past decade, but he's itching to know where he stands with her.

"You know, I'm just tryin' to look out for you, kid."

Her lips twitch but the rest of her visage remains impassive and faraway, more like a flick knife than a woman. The correlation is uncanny.

That's when she inches closer. The space between them bridged. He freezes. Hyper-aware of just how dangerous this is, but can’t bring himself to pull back, to look the other way. Not when her hand reaches out to pluck the cigarette from his mouth, eyes still glued to his, and curls her lips around the filter. One heavy pull, and then she rolls down the window and tosses it out on the side of the road.

"Thought I'd reciprocate the sentiment."

And with that, she leans back in her seat before Adler could even process what has just transpired.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Welcome back to the land of the living, kid,” Adler greeted her, about a month ago.

Park had insisted that he had to be there for her when she woke up (naturally, Adler had balked at the idea, but at the English woman’s fact-of-the-matter explanation, also because it had somewhat dawned on him last minute the logic behind her machinations- “both of you are supposed to have known each other for years now. If she doesn't see you by her side, she’s going to wonder why”- thus, here he was)

“How are you feeling?”

Bell blinked owlishly and stared at the older man with those bottomless, cat-like eyes that had haunted him since January.

Her gaze eventually softened as recognition flickered across her face.

“Like someone just hit me in the chest with a bulldozer,” she said hoarsely. “Where are we?”

“St. Dismas’ hospital, Pittsburgh.” Adler got up and fetched her a glass of water from the table. “Although not a bulldozer, but bullets did. That, and you hit your head really hard on your way down. Thought we’d lost you there, Bell.”

Bell drank in silence. She’s still watching him, thinking. This was the first time he realized that he couldn’t exactly read her expression and somehow that threw him off.

“What happened?” she asked, one hand mid-air, like she was deciding which to touch first, hesitating and abandoned the idea.

“You don’t remember?” She shook her head. Adler pretended to look remotely distressed about it. “The doctors warned me about this. It must have been because of the fall- heck, I could even still hear that sickening crunch from here.” He dragged his chair closer towards her bed.

“We were in Amsterdam. Remember Fohler?” she shook her head again. “Well, we’d been tracking this son of a bitch for months, but we were chasing him in Amsterdam. He was running away and climbed up some scaffolding. You were about to go up after him,” he recited the fabricated story he, Park and Hudson had crafted. “He shot you and you fell and hit your head against the pavement.”

Bell looked away first, silent. Her hand gingerly touched the back of her head and winced, albeit only slightly.

Adler was almost impressed, if not, disarmed by how calm and composed her reaction was to all of this. But then again, after having had witnessed first-hand how the woman barely flinched under any kind of interrogation technique they threw at her- a personality built for wrestling tigers- he really shouldn’t be surprised.

“Bell, what is the last thing you remember?”

Bell frowned. “Not much. I remember ‘Nam, but-”

“Vietnam? Kid, that was thirteen years ago.” Adler watched the way her throat bopped, like she was swallowing her own blood and the color drained from her face, just like the first time he’d seen her, and proceeded to drop the bomb:

“Bell, the year is 1981.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Bell dear, would you mind taking a look at this?"

Park's voice sails from across the room. She says it like it's a compound word: Bell-dear. Like the two words belong together. Bell-dear. 2 syllables, 1 word, 9 characters and that just might be the weirdest thing he hears this year and he heard many things.

"Bell dear?" Adler asks much later, his gravel-and-smoke voice reduced to a whisper, when she delivers a document to his table.

Park shrugs as if that explains everything. "What? I like her."

He's tempted to say you really can't put a term of endearment and someone you brainwashed into submission in the same sentence, but what else is new?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

They wind up in a bar. It’s called Die Stube and the place’s brimmed with artists and all sorts of leather-clad, Bowie-esque dramatic, chromatic blue eyelids young people chattering over a dirty cloud of smoke.

The two of them colonize a lone booth in the back. It’s dark and the quietest. She orders a beer and he, a scotch and they drink in silence. There are moments where her head would twist to the side, as subtle as a needle and survey the phantasmagorical scene before them, like studying something from a petri dish.

While he’s watching her.

Only to tear his gaze away to the nearest object he can find.

It lands on his watch.

"It’s almost ten. Hudson's contact should be here soon," he announces, if anything to distract himself. She nods mutely in reply, as always, and runs a finger around the rim of her glass.

"The place ain't much of your scene?"

She shrugs, like it's self-evident. "I didn't know this was a scene, though."

"Well, that’s West Berlin for you. A worry-free playground for the hedonists, hipsters and proto-electro NDW enthusiasts with drugs on tap," Adler says, sipping his drink in practiced nonchalance. "Always makes my head spin."

"I guess I remember it differently," Bell replies, tinged with something akin to begrudging.

That warrants his full attention. "What do you remember?”

Bell shrugs again and lights a cigarette instead, menthol, one of those long, skinny cigarettes they only market for women; biding her time, making him wait. She lets the smoke flares from her nostrils so her eyes are veiled.

"It’s hard to explain, but I suppose it’s grittier?” she gesticulates, searching for the right word like she’s skim reading the entire Oxford dictionary in her head. “Bizarrely, infinitely grittier and dimmer? Like being in an underground tunnel and there's not much to see."

Interesting. Maybe she’s recalling one of her ops for Perseus or her mind is confusing her with the world on the other side of the wall.

“Maybe you’re remembering one of our clandestine ops here. It was a few years after Vietnam,” Adler supplies, passing over the tale like bait.

She falls for it, hook, line and sinker.

“Ah, I guess that also explains my fluency in German.”

“I taught you that.” It’s only logical, he decides, that she learned from him. She’s supposed to be his protégé after all.

An elegant brow quirk. "You did?"

"Yeah, though you were already fluent in Latin, Russian, Vietnamese and Portuguese when we first met anyway. You have quite a natural ear, kid.”

She gives him a look. He really can’t categorize it, but it makes it a whole lot harder to fight against her stare.

“What else did you teach me?”

If they were anyone else, the lines could have a potential to entice, to seduce, that winsome, catty-eyelashes coquette, but they aren't anyone else and Bell does not voice it like that. Yet the implication behind the question stirs something in the pit of Adler’s stomach anyway, that tight knot of confusion as it is buried with something else and he finds himself, once again, uncharacteristically speechless.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

That particular question of her stays, even hours later, unbidden. Interspersed with her scent and face.

His emotions are a minefield whenever she’s near now. It evokes that newfound rush of terror within him, like walking on a tightrope or being thrown into the pit to face hundreds of hungry lions, bare hands. It makes Adler questions his every decision, and he can’t have that in his line of work.

Adler lights his sixth cigarette, contemplating everything, nothing. Anything to distract him from her. It's 4 am and he’s exhausted, but his mind won’t stop whirring. This isn’t like him at all- like he's lost somewhere in a Dali-style labyrinth that is his head and he wonders if this is a byproduct of his fear or fascination or confusion for the young woman.

He fears it is all of them.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

(They're only 10 minutes away from East Berlin when he senses it, something akin to burning on his peripheral vision, pulling him like weight.

Bell is staring at him from across the seat.

He cocks his head slightly to the side.

Adler catches the quick, telling quirk of her lips, like she's about to smile but lights a cigarette instead.)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Did you hear that?”

Krauss has just crossed the wall and their soles are slippery from the rain. She's panting. Her breath is white like a fog. Adler muses it must be from the running, until his iris trails down to where her hand is clutching his jacket sleeve, the leather creasing like a modulation signal.

“What is it?” Adler asks, hushed. There are no Stasis here, but even one can't be too careful.

“The TV.” She’s gaping at the broken TV next to them. Adler looks at the said object, frowning, then back to her. “Y-you didn’t hear it?”

"Heard what? Bell, the thing's dead."

Bell withdraws from him. Stepping back until her back meets the walls, her eyes seeing and unseeing, like a lens finding focus in the dark, then she closes them, as if trying to regulate her breathing. Adler has never seen her scared shitless of anything before. The sight confuses as it intrigues him.

"Bell, what's going on?" Adler steps closer, but he dares not to touch her.

She shakes her head, dismissive. In just a span of seconds, Bell dons that mask she likes to wear again; deadpan and frustratingly distant. A spike of annoyance drives through him. Just when he thinks he can get through her, there she goes again, retreating behind her palisades.

"Nothing." Bell turns away abruptly and she’s walking again."Let's just go. The others are waiting for us."

He doesn't pry about whatever she heard on the TV- Adler knows better than to beat a dead horse, thank you very much- not even after they save her from Volkov's clutches, after she bashes his head against the steel door and reeks his blood all the way home, it seems superficial at the time.

Until two days later.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The day starts, as it mostly does for the team, with a briefing.

Fifteen minutes in and something like a gasp pulls his attention to her.

That’s when he notices it; her hands are shaking, coffee spilling out of the mug over her hand. A shatter follows. Her mug smashes to smithereens at her feet. She’s swaying, near collapse, like a house of cards about to fall, a hand on her nose.

Adler catches her before she tumbles to the floor.

“Bell!” His arm around her waist tightens, trying to keep her steady. Lazar rushes to their side in a flash and helps him move her to a nearby chair.

"Jesus Christ," he curses, more to himself than to her as he watches blood, a bead of angry red, trickling down her nose. "Sims, get me a washcloth from the bathroom."

He kneels before her once Sims returns with a damp cloth. Nicotine-stained gloved fingers tentatively grasp her chin, holding her still.

“Kid, you alright?” Adler asks, worry bleeds into his voice without him realizing it. He firmly presses the cloth under her nose, his other thumb touches the pulse at her throat- it's almost sickly affectionate. “Bell, talk to me."

Bell looks at him, discombobulated, like he's a figment of her imagination, then blinks. Again and again until she heaves a deep breath.

"I-" she hisses. One hand flies up to her head. "Fuck. My head.”

Adler’s eyes immediately search for Park’s. A knowing look passes over her face and he knows without saying that she's thinking the same thing, like they're attached to the same brain-wire:

MK-Ultra.

There’s a fraction of pause, then Lazar asks, "Should we give her something?”

Before Park can voice her answer, Bell beats her to it. "I already took an anticonvulsant this morning. It should have helped.”

“Wait, this has happened before?” Adler asks.

Bell looks away, a hesitating look shadowing her face. He fears the worst.

“Bell…” he tries again, a slight warning to his tone.

She sighs loudly, as if mentally preparing herself before walking into a storm.

“Yes. Two days ago."

His mind instantly refers to East Berlin, the TV. Trying to connect the dots in his head. It seems far fetched, but now he wonders if she saw something that triggers this. Although he's never read about this on other subjects before, the correlation is just impossible to ignore.

Fuck. He heaves a breath, willing himself to calm down, to think. They can't afford complications at times like these. Not when there's so much at stake right now.

Adler snaps his attention back to Bell when she tries to scramble awkwardly to her feet, swatting his hand away. The hand on her neck immediately reaches for her waist again and pushes her back down onto the chair. His grip's tight enough to leave marks on her skin, but he doesn't care.

"Bell, for fuck's sake, stay still or so help me," he says, exasperated, not letting go of her waist.

"I feel better now." Stubborn little shit.

He is tempted to scream at her face and grab both of her shoulders and shake. “The hell you’re not. Stop fighting it. You’ll only make things worse.”

Her face sours, if only for a millisecond before it morphs into guilt. “I’m sorry.”

Adler watches her for a long moment. It’s only now that he realizes that he’s still holding her waist and the cloth on her face.

He backs away from her like he’s been burnt.

“You should have told me. I thought I made it clear the other night to keep me informed regarding this,” he scolds.

“I’m sorry,” she utters again and she looks so pliable like this, a blank canvas perfumed with obedience and lethal mind. It makes him almost feel sorry for what he has in plan for her once the shit show is over.

“Look, just go back to the hotel and take a day off.” Her mouth cracks open. He raises a silencing hand. “That’s an order, Bell.” But she merely scowls, looking more like jagged ice than a person. Hudson may have just met his match, after all.

“I told you I’m fine.”

“That’s not how it looks to me.”

“It is. It’s my body and I know what I’m feeling, and I’m telling you, I. Feel. Fine.”

His jaw clenches. “Are you disobeying a direct order, agent?”

Bell doesn’t answer, but her whole face remains challenging and hard. Undeterred.

Adler holds his breath. He feels the whole room collectively does the same. It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun and there’s an awful sort of danger to be found in that.

Just when he thinks an imaginary bullet would dig itself into his skin, however, Bell utters, “Of course not.”

And so the woman resumes to her normal, docile self at a drop of a hat. Even when Park steps in and whisks her out of her seat, drives her back to her hotel with Lazar on shotgun.

It doesn’t assuage his worry, though. He’s still restless throughout the day, like a roaring ocean inside a bell jar. She’s never done this before, openly rebels against him. Now, the situation is just bad. Not casually bad or almost-got-shot bad, this is the-entire-Europe-could-turn-into-a-nuclear-wasteland bad, an-armageddon-waiting-to-happen bad.

What if this is the beginning of her old self trying to scratch her way out of the surface? Adler’s blood goes cold at the thought. He is going to have to keep a close eye on this development.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

West Berlin - 1 am, local time.

“How is she?”

“Stable. I’ve administered another dose of Propranolol before I left the hotel. She should be fit as a fiddle in the morning.”

“Tell me, what do you think happened to her?”

“My theory? Traumatic brain injury. A cumulative product of torture, trauma-based mind control and chronic stress. I've read reports about cases like these before in MI6. None of them is still alive to recount the tale, unfortunately."

Adler grips the phone.

“How long do you think we have?”

“Theoretically, 2-3 weeks tops.”

“But?”

He hears Park sighs on the other line. “But then again, none of the subjects I’ve encountered before were like her. So, I suppose it’s still a little too premature to determine at this point."

Adler kneads his temple, feeling the start of that familiar Bell-induced headache forms in his head. Can things just be fucking simple for once?

“We don’t have that much time anyway, Park. And if Hudson gets a wind of this, he’ll want her gone by morning. I can’t let that happen. Not…” he pauses. “Not when we are this close.”

"What are we going to do about her, then?"

Adler sighs.

"Raise the dosages of her drugs,” he says. “And keep an extra eye on her. I think we may be heading into uncharted waters now.”

Tagging: @mvalentine cause you said to tag you with everything i write so 👁👄👁

#russell adler #russell adler x bell #cod bell #cod #call of duty #call of duty black ops #call of duty cold war #cod cold war #alex mason #frank woods #helen park #lawrence sims #jason hudson #lazar azoulay

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goji-pilled · 3 years ago

Note

MK-S: Here’s part three of “Phil’s Rage”. Enjoy! (And also a link back to part 2).

One moment Haru had been about to kill the Witch, to free her from her cursed existence, the next she felt like she’d been yanked by her hair (or even her very skull) upwards to, to…

Her eyes widened as her mind finally began to process, or rather, began to fail to process her surroundings. Around her was only darkness, but not any darkness she was accustomed to. This wasn’t the inky blackness of night. This was more…more…she didn’t have a word for it. How could she have a word for this? She couldn’t, no one could, no one should! This place, this lack of a place, whatever it was it was wrong!

Haru’s breathing quickened. She could feel the lack of air being pulled into her lungs, she knew she should be suffocating, but she wasn’t. But she could scream. And so she did.

Below her…Above her? Both at once? She couldn’t say; all she knew is what she saw, the only thing to see in this non-place: a single star, radiating black light. Never before had the darkness of night shined so brightly. Such black light…

She looked at her soul gem. It was rapidly turning as dark as the black star. Kyubey had told her of this; but it would be for the best. To lose herself in her own agony seemed heavenly when faced with this void. In a place where she could hurt no others, it was almost ideal. She just wished she could have had a chance to say goodbye to her family. Tears welled up in her eyes as the thought fully registered. She would never see them again…

Her gem turned black as pitch, yet still glowed brightly against the background of the void. Then it seemed to explode as a new grief seed began to form. She could feel her mind slipping, drowning in a sea of anguish, one that she welcomed despite the pain it was causing her. She closed her eyes and screamed once more.

But then her mind stopped slipping. Almost as if she’d reached the end of some sort of chain that forced her to remain herself, keeping her from falling off the cliffs of sanity. Haru opened her eyes and looked at where her soul gem had been. Where it still was. There was something, something in the nothing she was floating in. It was grasping the shattered shards of her soul gem. Keeping the pieces from drifting further apart. Something was around her now. Shapes, bathed in the non-light of the black star. They were…were..!

She screamed. The things (thing?) around her all screamed too. For how long, she couldn’t tell. And then there was silence. Even from Haru, though she didn’t know why. It was as if her own voice had suddenly ceased to exist.

Something was moved closer towards her. Bobbing up and down as though whatever it was connected to was expanding and contracting to bring it near. It looked…the shape was humanoid, but with elongated limbs, and a face like porcelain. The top of the head looked like it had been shattered, and some sort of tentacle or some other type of appendage had been pressed inside, connecting the empty husk to the only other thing in this darkness.

And then it spoke…in a way. It didn’t so much speak the words as much as willed their meanings to appear in her mind. This was to be her punishment…her eyes widened as her mind corrected the context. This wasn’t her punishment; this is just where her punishment would be held.

The silence persisted as the doll-like eyes flicked down to look at her. Then the porcelain mouth opened wide…then wider…then wider still. And then a hand came out of its gaping maw. This one looked older and sickly, bony fingers curled around something. The fingers uncurled, to reveal a broken piece of sharp steel, as though a section of a knife had been torn or bitten off and stored within the puppet. The mouth-hand passed the metal shard into the doll’s right hand, before being pulled back down into what should have been a throat. The arm jerked over her, each movement of the limb done in sequence, as though a machine had been set to roughly handle each motion. The hand was placed above her chest, and in contrast to the previous movements of the arm, the fingers nimbly twirled the knife shard before placing a jagged tip just above her sternum.

And then the entity made the first cut.

MK-S: Fun fact, the use of the phrase “Such Black Light” is actually an SCP reference, as it’s the title of an SCP. What are the details of that Skip?…Uh, I’m not sure. The Exploring Series explanation of it went over my head. But I loved the phrase “Such Black Light.” That phrase also served as the inspiration for Klarissa’s “black star”. It’s also just a fun Eldritch concept; for dark, the absence of light, to be considered bright.

(Also, stole the hand emerging from mouth thing from Crypt TV’s “Look-See”. Live action horror with unique monsters, I don’t recommend if you’re younger than 18, there is blood and gore in their work. As to why I’m mentioning this at all, just citing my sources.)

Phil is currently having a moment of rage, one of those moments where you’re so mad you could do something you may regret later…but in a place where time has no real meaning, a “moment” can last for quite a while. (And he’s using his portion of Klarissa’s Lovecraft knife.)

Hope this was fun to read! (Oh, and slight spoiler for upcoming part: Haru isn’t going to die…for better or for worse.)

THERES A PART 3? OH DEAR.

#felix answers #io3 #long post #do i. do i have to start trigger tagging from that point?#xnamxbmadh #alao i feel like it were better if she just died.#god.

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grailfinders · 4 years ago

Text

Fate and Phantasms #190 & 191

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re providing you a horror double feature- Mecha-Eli chan and Mecha-Eli chan Mk. II! Since they’re nearly identical (in NA) all you have to change between one and the other is how you roleplay. But hey, you technically get an extra build this week, go you!

Both of these servants are 100% Armorer Artificers for some fancy techno-gadgets built into their metal bodies.

Check out their builds breakdown below the cut, or their characters sheet over here!

Next up: She’s got so many pigs around her you’d think she opened a doughnut shop!

Race and Background

Shockingly, the robots... are robots. Specifically, Warforged, which gives them +2 Constitution and +1 Intelligence. They also get Constructed Resilience, which makes you a better ruler since you don’t need to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, or get sick, you get advantage and resistance to poison saves and damage. Elisabeth might get sick from eating all that candy, but you won’t even be tempted.

Instead of sleeping, you take a Sentry’s Rest, spending 6 hours in a still state- you can still see, but you can’t move without breaking the rest.

Integrated Protection gives you your first armored casing, adding +1 to your AC. You can also don armor by fusing it to your body over an hour, letting you wear heavy armor without having to take off your tutu.

Finally, you get a Specialized Design, giving you proficiency with Performance and one set of tools. If you want to get your Elisabeth on, I’d suggest Bagpipes, so you can clear the room just as fast as she can.

Being a robot makes your background a bit complicated, but you were made to rule Castle Csejte Pyramid Himeji so we’ll call you a Noble, which gives you proficiency with History and Persuasion. If you’re playing Mk. II, swap the latter over to Intimidation, boom, roleplay changes done.

Ability Scores

Your highest score should be Intelligence, you have a supercomputer for a brain, it’s not a huge stretch. Constitution comes next, aside from Babbage you’re the only servant made out of iron. So far. Your Strength should also be pretty good, while you do shoot people, you also hit them, and you have one of the most damaging NPs in the game when ignoring type advantage. Your Charisma isn’t bad per se, but your delivery does get a little stiff from time to time. Your Wisdom isn’t that great, neither of you really “get” people. Yes, humans might take offense at being forced to stay in their homes their entire natural lives. That means we’re dropping Dexterity. Your head literally falls off on a regular basis, that’s an accident that would kill most people. Also, you’re not exactly running around in leather, so it’s not like you’d need it.

Class Levels

Starting off as an Artificer gives you proficiency with Constitution and Intelligence saves, as well as two skills. Arcana is the closest thing to robotics in the forgotten realm, and Investigation will help you make a sweep of the battlefield with your robot eyes. Your first machines are made using your Magical Tinkering, adding minor effects to tiny objects. It’s not exactly the wish spell, but you can get creative with it. Speaking of Spells, you can cast and prepare those now using your Intelligence. All you have to do is be smart. Grab the cantrip Mage Hand for a non-combat use for your rocket arm, and Sword Burst so you can try spinning to damage nearby enemies with your tail. I hear it’s a neat trick. You can also cast first level spells, like Feather Fall and Jump (it’s almost flying), as well as Catapult for a prototype rocket arm. Also, if you can spare the slots, grab Detect Magic for robo scanning.

For more substantive mechanics, you’ll have to Infuse Items over a long rest, creating two items from a choice of four blueprints, both of which will go up in number as you level up. Right now, I’d suggest grabbing Goggles of Night and Sending Stones for recon missions, an Enhanced Arcane Focus for better bullets later, and an Armor of Magical Strength for a suit of armor that can either add your intelligence modifier to strength checks and saves or prevent you from getting knocked prone. Doing either spends one of six charges, which partially get refilled at dawn.

Moving to the Armorer subclass dumps you into a proper heavy armor setup, but you can make it even more impressive by turning it into Arcane Armor. This lets you ignore the strength requirements for heavy armor (which you can wear now), and you can use the armor as a spellcasting focus. There’s also stuff about the armor being a part of you, but that’s already true thanks to being a warforged. As the guardian of Hungary you get the Guardian Model, which gives you cool Thunder Gauntlets that use your Intelligence to attack instead of your strength. Creatures that you punch this way have disadvantage against other creatures for a round. It can also produce a Defensive Field as a bonus action, giving you your level in temporary HP, up to Proficiency times per long rest. Finally, you get some free armorer spells to go along with your new outfit. Magic Missiles do a good job of standing in for bullets, and Thunderwave gives you a finale for your Breast Zero Erzsébet.

Your first Ability Score Improvement is going towards making your regular attacks even more powerful with the Crusher feat, rounding up your Strength and making your fists able to shove a creature they hit once per turn, moving a large or smaller creature 5′ away. Your critical hits also give all other attacks against that creature advantage. (Catapult is a save, so I don’t think they work together, but that’s a DM thing, I guess.)

Fifth level armorers get an Extra Attack per action, so you can make enemies taste both of your hands each turn. You also get second level spells, like Mirror Image to put together some cheap factory-made knockoffs to take damage for you and Shatter for more sound-based pain. You can also prepare spells like Levitate for your first taste of flight, Enlarge/Reduce to make yourself the giant mecha you were born to be, See Invisibility for more robo-scanners, and Pyrotechnics for some movie magic.

Sixth level artificers get Tool Expertise, doubling their proficiency with all proficient tools. Now you’ll be really good at clearing out a bar with your bagpipes. You also get two more Infusions, with one more up at a time. Some Resistant Armor will make you deaf to your own music with resistance to thunder damage, or you can customize it to block out plenty of other types, like acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder. Makes a great gift for the totem barbarians in your party! You also get a Spell-Refueling Ring, because pretty soon you’ll be flying, and the worst thing you can do while flying is run out of spell slots. As an action, you’ll recover a 3rd level or lower spell slot once per day.

At seventh level, your Flashes of Genius make your smarts even smarter, letting you add your intelligence modifier as a reaction to nearby checks or saves Intelligence Modifier times per long rest. You were literally built to do everything for your subjects, it only makes sense that you’d be good at it.

Use this ASI to bump up your Intelligence for stronger spells, stronger punches, and more flashes of genius. You take a little bit to get warmed up, but that’s true of most computers.

Ninth level armorers can make Armor Modifications, turning your armor into four items for the purpose of infusion, and you can infuse an extra 2 items specifically if they’re part of your armor. That’ll be really cool next level, but what’s really cool right now is your third level spells, including the freebies Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt. I would’ve preferred fireball, but we’ll take what we can get for big guns. You can also prepare spells like Fly to fly under your own power instead of awkwardly levitating like a balloon, Haste to overclock your computer, and Intellect Fortress to lord your superior brain over the fleshlings, giving you resistance to psychic damage, and advantage on intelligence, wisdom, and charisma saves.

When you hit tenth level you become a Magic Item Adept, partially because you’re a magic item. This means you get an extra attunement slot, and crafting common or uncommon items is a lot cheaper and faster. You also learn the Fire Bolt cantrip for more options from your guns. On top of all that, you get two more infusion blueprints, and can have one more made at a time. I’d pick up some Winged Boots for concentration free flight up to 4 hours a day, and a Helm of Awareness to give a creature advantage on initiative rolls and immunity to being surprised. You don’t really wear a helmet, but you give one to Guda during the valentines events, so now you can do that in game.

At eleventh level, you can make Spell-Storing Items at the end of a long rest, shoving a 1st or 2nd level artificer spell into a weapon or focus. A creature can cast that spell from the item up to twice your Intelligence modifier times, and it is as powerful as if you cat it yourself. You can only have one spell stored this way at a time.

I really wanted to multiclass into sorcerer this build, but to be honest the final level of artificer is too good to really pass up. So instead, use this ASI to become a Metamagic Adept, gaining two sorcery points and two ways to spend them. Most of your spells are really just part of your body, so a Subtle spell will make that more obvious by making the casting less obvious. You won’t need somatic or verbal components. Alternatively, you can use a Careful spell to turn your giant blasty spells into something slightly more controlled, automatically letting one creature make their save against the spell. You use a lot of firepower for a single-target NP.

Thirteenth level artificers get fourth level spells. Fire Shield and Greater Invisibility aren’t in character, but they are useful, and using useful things is in character. You can also cast spells like Stoneskin, which is an understatement if anything, Summon Construct or Fabricate to build extra Elis, and Arcane Eye for your very own security drone. I also recommend grabbing the glyph of warding from level 3 so you can fully stock your castle with summoned versions of yourself to attack intruders.

Fourteenth level artificers are Magic Item Savants, letting you ignore all restrictions for magic item use, and you can attune to five items at a time. You also get the Prestidigitation cantrip for easy 3d printing, and two more infusions, plus one more built at a time. Grab the Belt of Hill Giant Strength for a whopping 21 strength, and an Arcane Propulsion Arm for a proper rocket punch. That last one does come with a pretty hefty price though- you will have to chop an arm off to put this one on. (Your armor will replace the arm if you have to make space for another infusion though, so it’s not all bad.) Annoyingly, this arm also deals force damage for some fucking reason, so you can’t use crusher on this either. I’d let you just punch people normally though.

Fifteenth level armorers get their final goody, giving them Perfected Armor. Now your guardian model lets you spend a reaction to pull a huge or smaller creature closer to you at the end of its turn if it fails a strength save, and if it’s pulled into melee range you can wollop it as part of the reaction. You can do this Proficiency times per long rest. We’ll consider this a giant hand giving them a nudge in your direction.

Another ASI, use this one for more Intelligence. Now you have the strongest and most flashes, as well as super strong spells and force punches.

At seventeenth level you get fifth level spells, like the freebies Passwall and Wall of Force. Technically it’s invisible, but a giant hand cupping around you to block damage is totally possible. Speaking of giant hands, Bigby’s Hand lets you make a giant mecha hand that actually acts like a hand for once. Yes, we are fitting Mecha Eli’s bit from Las Vegas in here. You can also use Creation to make an exact copy of your body, and Animate Objects to bring it to life. It’s not as powerful as the original, but that’s what you get with factory-made goods.

Eighteenth level artificers are Magic Item Masters, letting you attune to six items at once. You also get another two blueprints with another one built at the same time, so unless you’re powerbuilding grab another Arcane Propulsion Arm for two rocket fists, and a Ring of Protection for a bonus to your AC and saves.

Use your last ASI to become Tough, for 38 extra HP right away and another two when you level up again. You are literally made of steel. Come on.

Your capstone level grants you a Soul of Artifice, which is pretty busted. You get a bonus to all saves equal to the number of magic items you’re attuned to, and if you would drop to 0 HP you can end one of your infusions instead, sticking around at 1 HP. We weren’t able to make your mass-production work out that well, but if you have to die 9 times to actually go down, I’d count that as extra copies.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

You’re hard as hell to kill. With your lowest save being a +6 and the ability to add 5 to any save you don’t like the look of, magic will just slide right off you. Plus, with an AC of 20, just over 200 HP, and temporary HP from the guardian model, you have a lot of health to chew through from martial classes as well.

And that’s assuming they can even hit you! Flight is awesome, giving you plenty of mobility to avoid most combatants entirely and rain down fists and hellfire from a safe distance.

This build is highly customizable, with tons of tricks and gadgets to swap out as the situation calls for them.

Cons:

You’re super reliant on magical items to protect you, so if you get caught up in an anti-magic field it won’t be fun. Like, most artificers will have an awkward fight, but you won’t have arms.

While you have a lot of infusion options, you can’t have all of them up at once. That means you’ll have to make hard decisions constantly, and basically predict the future each long rest.

Two of the feats we took aren’t really that great, and probably should have gone towards better stats. Crusher only works on your regular punches, which are outclassed by your magic weapons, and you only get two weak uses of Metamagic per day.

#fate grand order #fgo #DND 5e #D&D #Mecha Eli Chan #artificer

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dancingthesambaa · 4 years ago

Text

The Smell of Plum Blossom Tea Ch 13

Summary: Just like a butterfly wing, a single act of kindness can change the course of the future, it certainly did for MK as a black furred monkey put out a hand towards him.

Rating: Teen and up

Chapter 13: The Apocalypse (But with More Bulls)

A group of children huddled together as they tried to escape the robotic drones that surrounded them in the ice cream shop. The streets were no longer safe as they had been filled with roaming Bull drones and they ripped and tore no matter what or who stood in their way. They hoped that they would be able to wait it out until help arrived, but they didn’t count on the drones coming into the building and finding them.

“AHHHHH!” They all screamed as the bulls began to leap at them.

SMASH! BASH! CRASH!

Their eyes widened as they saw the machines falling to the ground in bits and pieces until there was nothing left except for an ominous violet figure before them.

“S-s-stay away!” One of the older children nervously warned as she stood in front of them with her arms stretched out.

“Dude, he-she-they just saved our butts,” another child put a hand on her shoulder, “I think they are one of the good guys.”

“We don’t know that!” She argued.

“I mean, they are standing right there and haven’t attacked us yet sooo,” a younger girl pointed out. “Point in the good guy direction.”

“That doesn’t mean-”

“Wait, I know him!” They all snapped their heads to the youngest in their group as he ran up to the figure.

“Bao!”

“Wait!”

“Are you crazy?!”

“MAC MAC!” He grinned as he threw his body to him, “I am so happy you are here!”

The monkey said nothing as he caught the child and gently patted the child's head.

“Sooo, Imma go out on a limb here and say he's good,” said the girl with the prosthetic arm. She happily smirked at their groans.

“Oh yeah, he is my sister's former teacher, though I don’t think I've ever seen you like this,” he pondered.

“Clone,” the demon uttered.

“Clone?”

“Follow me,” he instead said as he walked to the door, “I’ll take you where it’s safe.”

“Really?”

“Awesome!”

“That’s a relief.”

“Can I bring some ice cream?”

The children all chatter with a bit more pep in their step as they trudge through the war torn streets and fallen buildings until they laid eyes on a set of buildings that looked relatively untouched by the madness surrounding them with a pristine white hospital building in the middle of it all. Some people were littered around the street, but when they stepped into the hospital it was a lot more hectic as not only doctors and nurses were bustling around trying to tend to as many wounded as they could. But there were also regular people trying to give a helping hand as they either did basic first aid to those who needed it or helped the staff collect the supplies they needed.

“Whoa,” they all collectively gape at the semi organized chaos inside.

“Bao!” The child looks to see Bohai's relieved expression, “thank the gods you and your friends are okay.”

“Mac Mac saved us,” he wiggled out of the monkey arms to get a hug from the jellyfish demon then he looked around the room. “Where’s Yanyu? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine, she was working when this all went down, so she is currently in the back taking care of a bunch of patients. Are you all alright?”

“Just scrapes and bruises,” one of the girls says as she covers the mouth of the one armed girl. “You are not making another missing arm joke, you hear me.”

“Fine,” she huffed then she grinned mischievously as she looked at Bohai, “so do you guys need a hand, I can only spare you one though.”

“For the love of-!”

“Stoppp!”

“Nooo!”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she laughed at the agony.

“If you want to bring the staff some snacks and drinks, and yes I’m including everyone in this list, that would be awesome. They really need to pick me up right now,” he showed them to a small area where copious amounts of food and drinks were laid out. “People have been bribing them since this all started, but no one really had a break yet.”

“You can count on us!” The oldest girl saluted as she and the rest gathered snacks in their arms and began to spread out all through the hospital, except for Bao who was still holding onto the jellyfish. Even the clone Macaque had left had begun to venture through the hospital and began to help out a few patients.

“…is everyone else alright,” he whispered out in hesitation.

Bohai kneeled down and smiled, “I think they will be just fine, your brothers and sisters are smart after all. I know they will pull through.”

“Right,” he nodded and shared a grin.

“And we have people and demons looking for anyone who needs help,” that included his friends on the list as Daiyu took to the skies and over the seas, Minsheng and Ahmed took to the streets looking for stragglers, and Macaque leaping from building to building checking to see if there are any lingering people trapped inside. “So don’t worry about them, instead how about we focus on feeding some hungry people. I know how cranky they can get when their bellies are empty.”

“Like Yan Yan when she forgot to eat because she had a 30 hour shift and she tied us all up when we mentioned her leftover food in the fridge.”

“Exactly.”

“How does this keep happening to us!” Mei yelled out as she and MK were hanging onto the sword for dear life as they dangled above the pit of despair.

“I don’t know!” MK yelled too as he clung onto Mei’s legs. “How do we get down?!”

“I don’t know!” She adjusted her grip on the sword, “we are currently on our way to fight the Demon Bull King, one of Monkey King greatest enemies, with less than 2 weapons on us if you don’t count my daggers and your brass knuckles, the rest of our team still keeping the ones up top busy and-wait!” Mei’s eyes brighten, “not everyone!”

“Huh? Who?!”

“Macaque!” Mei could feel a breath of relief come through her, “he’s still in the city dealing with the other clones, but I think this warrants a higher attention.” If anyone, other than the Monkey King and MK, can stop the Bull King, it’s him.

“I don’t know,” MK flinched as Mei's head creaked to him and her eyes began to twitch.

“Oh no, we are so not doing this, I am calling fuzzbutt whether you like it or not,” she stated and she sucked in a deep breath.

“Wait,” he quickly climbed her and put his hands over her mouth, “we don’t need to call him, I can handle this.”

“Do you not see where we are?” She would emphasize their precarious situation, but she is currently holding onto the only thing that is stopping the both of them from becoming mush on the floor. “What is your problem with calling him for help?”

“Nothing,” he too quickly defended himself.

“Then you should have no problem if I call him.”

“You're not calling for him.”

I’m calling him.”

“No, you're not,” he argued.

“I am!”

“You're not!”

“Am!”

“Not!”

“Am!”

“Not!”

“Am!”

“Not!”

“Am! Wait-dammit!” He cursed as he got tricked.

“Ha! I win, and I'm calling him!” Mei grinned.

MK was about to refute her when he saw a terrifying sight above them. “Noooo.”

She raised her eyebrow as she turned to see what he was looking at and she almost let go of her sword as she saw hundreds of deactivated Bull drones stationary all over the walls and mere meters from where they were at.

“Shit.”

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ

Mei’s phone buzzed quite loudly.

“Shit.”

Blue eyes lit up one by one as the drones quickly woke up at the sound as their heads all snapped towards the two lone humans.

“SHIT!”

“GHA!” Red son grunted out as he was flung back. He gritted his teeth as the sharp rocks pierced him, but he shakily stood up as he stood behind his mother, who was also silently huffing for air as the two of them faced down the enraged Bull King. He knew something was wrong, there had to be something, otherwise, his father wouldn't so carelessly nor even attempt to accuse the two of them of traitorous intent based on the barest of threads.

‘There has to be,’ he desperately thought as he silently looked at his hands and gripped it as it began to heat up. ‘But there is no defining evidence…I should have never taken that key.’ He regretted silently as they were once more prepared to go toe to toe with the Bull King when out of nowhere.

“AHHHHHHHH!” BOOM

MK lands face first into the ground.

“Noodle boy?!” What is he doing here?!

“Little thief,” Bull King hissed out as he then gripped his head and uttered. “Sun Wukong.”

Both he and his mother were startled by that admission as they couldn’t help but share a glance, as they passively watched Bull King begin his assault on the Monkey King successor.

Red son gritted his teeth as he watched his friend get pulverized by his father. ‘I have to do something, but what can I do? Something nefarious is afoot with father and yet I am standing here like a dame instead of helping MK. MK? No! No, I mean I have to help father snap out of whatever has come over him instead of beating upon my fri-noodle boy! Hurting noodle boy…he is hurting noodle boy…MK.” He snapped out of his thoughts when he saw the horrifying sight of the rage filled demon looming over MK with his fists raised high in the air.

“NO!” He burst into flames and charged forward, but was stopped by his mother as she swiftly sent out two airstrikes to the Bull King and used her fan to sweep the boy away from his demise and plopped him down next to the both of them.

“Wha-” he groggily got up as he looked up in surprise at Princess Iron Fan.

“It’s the canister, they have driven him mad with power,” she said as she hatefully eyed the glowing blue canisters upon the Bull King back.

“Well that’s a problem,” he blinked as he saw the skeletal remains floating about in the sludge of energy.

Then in a feral-like fury where only instinct took full control of body rather than the mind, the Bull King had snarled at them and began to charge on all fours.

“All right,” he used his staff to pick himself up, “time for round 2.”

“No, we fight together,” the prince said in determination as he readied his stance and was about to charge once more when another voice echoed.

“Seems like you guys can use a hand,” their eyes widen as they see the Bull King sink into the ground as a massive transparent violent hand of energy crushed him.

“Dad/Macaque!” MK and Red son cried out in relief as Iron Fan said it a bit more calmly as MK continued. “How are you here?!”

“Jade rang for me,” the voice echoed out as it continued its struggle against pinning the demon down. “Said some interesting things too.”

Mei's hands twitched anxiously as she waited for any sign of MK. She had just finished cleaning up the rest of the drones in the caves, but she thought it best if she kept here in case there would be any bot or people trying to sneak in to aid the nefarious family. Yet, that didn’t stop her from wanting to go down there and help her friend, no matter how stupid or dangerous that may be.

“You know what, screw this. Sorry MK, but we need all the help,” she gave a quick apology as she sucked in a deep breath and yelled, “MACAQUUEEE!”

Her voice vibrated through the walls.

She knew that she could have easily called him on her phone and he would have come just as quick, but that didn’t really matter in the long run as he saw a dark figure leap his way over to her. “Took you long enough,” she said with a small grin as he phased into the mech.

“Sorry, the city is in chaos as you know,” Macaque sarcastically said as he eyed her state to see any injuries.

“I’m fine,” she quickly said, “but MK is down there fighting DBK!”

“What!” His golden eyes that were tinted with violet eyes snapped onto her light green ones as all six ears twitched.

“Yeah, he didn’t want me to tell you, but I think we have bigger things to worry about.”

“Don’t want me-no,” he stopped himself short before he could go deeper. “Putting that to the side, for now, bigger problems first. Will you be fine if I go to your idiot brother.”

“I am currently inside of a monkey mech,” she deadpanned, “I am more than fine.”

He shot her a smirk and ruffled her already messed up hair and sunk back into the shadows and began to move deeper into the pit.

“Ahaha, about that,” MK nervously scratched the back of his neck.

“We are talking about this later.”

“Yeah that’s fair,” he slumped down.

Then a figure leaped out from the shadows of the Bull King as the Bull King rapidly gained back its bearing and destroyed the hand pinning it down.

Macaque whistled, “Well, I thought that it would at least keep you down a little longer than that, but apparently I’m wrong.”

“It’s the canister!” MK yelled, “they’re amplifying his powers.”

“You don’t say,” he muttered as he eyed the glowing blue power of energy then stared at it a bit harder as something felt off about it. “Somethings not right.”

Princess Iron Fan raised an eyebrow at his comment but quickly pushed it aside as she readied herself. “We can save questions for later, right now we have to get those off of my husband.”

“Right,” he nodded and his eyes went back to the Bull King who was getting up, “alright anyone got a plan.”

“Both Red son and I shall distract him, while the two of you get that monstrosity off him,” she said.

“Gotcha, you ready comet,” he summoned a few of his clones.

MK hesitated before nodding as he put his staff forward, “born ready.”

Then, without warning, the rest of the royal family burst into action as the two attacked the Bull King in a rapid fire as he was suddenly surrounded by a huge fire tornado.

“YOU SHALL FALL TOGETHER!” He roared out as he dispersed it with a loud crackle of energy.

Both of them, who was very much still injured and winded from their already long fight, were pushed back as they fell into the rubble. They slowly tried to get up as the glowing King stomped his way towards them.

His form seemed to almost ripple in anticipation as he locked his glowing blue eyes on their downed forms. No hesitation in his steps as the voices in his head urged him to finally end the traitors.

End the traitors

Destroy them for their treachery

Build a kingdom worth your name

Let their bones turn into ashes

Let their blood soak into the ground

Let their flesh set a reminder

You are the true king

“Yesss,” he hissed out his agreement as he raised his arms to finish them (ignoring the heavy invisible restraint against his arm and a small voice yelling at him to stop.) He would end this now.

Then his head was hit by a rock.

He snarled as he turned to look at MK, who was still in a throwing position.

“Hey, guess I’m a better pitcher than a hitter!” He joked, but then yelped as he felt himself get caught in the Bull’s hand.

“I’ve had about enough of you, one would think that you would learn more of the little sage tricks,” he snarled.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he shrugged.

Bull King snarled as he proceeded to squeeze him until he was nothing but bones and blood.

“Wait! Wait!” He cried out until he poofed out in a golden light.

“What!” He shouted as he looked at the falling hair, “a clone!?”

“Yup!” He looked to see the real MK in mid-air, “and I didn’t learn little tricks from only the Monkey King,” he grinned as he summoned a hoard full of clones.

He snarled and was about to jump up to meet them when he felt his hooves and hands being grabbed, he looked down to see many Macaque clones holding him down, while some were grabbing his hands.

“Get ready for a nice wake up call,” the real Macaque smirked as he kept into the shadow to keep a steady supply of energy to his clones.

“HERE COMES MONKIE KID!” MK cried out as he and his clones proceeded to all out attack the Bull King until the canister was finally knocked off his back and with one final burst of energy, it had dispersed.

Freedom

Gather back

Become one again

Vessel

Freedom

The black furred monkey felt a shiver running up his spine as he heard the voices ringing in his ears. He looked around and sure enough, it seemed that he was the only one who heard the ominous whispers.

‘That wasn’t a normal power madness,’ he concluded as he realized what really happened. Before he could tell the rest he felt a gust of wind come about as the three demons proceeded to leave.

“Are you serious?!” MK panicked as the rocks began to fall down all around them. “You really just left us here!”

“Honestly not surprised,” he shrugged his shoulder and grabbed his kid by the back of his shirt, “now come on and let’s get out of here before the rocks do us in.”

“How?!”

BOOM!

They looked to see a giant Monkey Mech burst in as Mei smiled at them.

“Everything went well! Need a lift?”

“Mei!”

“Nice timing Mushu.”

“That was some fight huh,” Sandy said as he ate his noodles on top of the giant mech with everyone else. “But we managed to stop DBK.”

“Nice job defeating him MK,” Tang grinned as he slurped up the remains of his bowl.

“I don’t know, I don’t think I really defeated him,” he muttered as he fiddled with his chopsticks. “There was something weird, that power he had just made him…different.”

“But we won right,” she looked on the bright side.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” the historian appeared over Pigsy's shoulder and was casually grabbing some noodles from his bowl. “You don’t need this right sugar.”

“Get your hands off my food!” He pulled away from his lover as everyone around them laughed.

Amid their exuberant energy, they haven’t quite realized that the area was almost desolate with anyone else, including animals and bugs that usually roam around here. The only animal anywhere near them was a bird that perched right on top of one of the outer rocks in the clearing. It seemed to be in a tranquil state as it took in the scene, so it spread its wings to fly off when a voice stopped him.

“You know you could have jumped down and talked to them instead of standing there like an actual creeper,” said Macaque as he emerged from the shadow.

The bird gave him wide eyes as he instinctively transformed back into his original form, “Didn’t really think I should just go in there when all is said and done,” Wukong said as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Wow, it must have taken a long time to think about that with the way you were sitting there,” he rolled his eyes and leaned against the rock.

“I’m not that bad,” he muttered and settled back down on top of the rock.

“Could have fooled me with the number of times you have a stupid idea.”

“Oh like you haven’t had one.”

“I have my own fair share, but it doesn’t even pale in comparison to yours, should I bring up the Kinnara incident,” he smirked.

“How was I supposed to know that she would kick our ass for interrupting her song,” he grumbled.

“Your ass,” he emphasized, “I had the common sense to stay behind, one would think not to mess with a being whose own gaze can pierce through you.”

“Didn’t seem that way to me.”

“Well, you didn’t have something called survival instinct.”

“To be fair I had plenty of instincts, but I just chose to ignore it back then and thought she was a harmless target,” he then shuddered, “so many regrets that day.”

“Pfft,” he chuckled lowly and Wukong couldn’t help but join in. He knew he was very stupid back then and so much more impulsive and looking back on it now, it is rather funny. But the laughter couldn’t last forever as it then died down as the atmosphere turned into an awkward silence.

Both monkeys knew they were avoiding the bigger problem at hand, but neither wanted to bring that up. At the same time though, they couldn’t ignore it forever, and eventually one of them will have to make the first step soon.

So Macaque opened his mouth and said, “Well if you ever feel like leaving your mountain other than stalking my kid, the forest is always open.”

“Really,” his eyes widened.

‘You really want to see me again.’ The silent question was asked.

“It is a public area, though you might want to bring starlight along with you if you want to see the not so public sights,” he said with a shrug.

‘Yes, I do.’ Was the silent answer.

“I’ll definitely do that! Maybe sometime next week?” He couldn’t stop his smile from growing widely.

“That work, well I got to get back. Too much damn medicine to make and that’s with my clone's help,” he grumbled as he pushed back off the rock.

“See you then,” he said with a short wave.

Macaque flippantly waved his hand as he sank back into the shadows.

Wukong grinned as he watched his friend's aura travel through his shadows until he had reached the city limits. It was only then he turned back into his bird form and took off towards his mountain once more.

“So the hospital is really that backed up again,” MK asked as he sat on top of the rooftop with his dad the next day.

“Like a car side swiping a train,” he groaned as he laid down. “I just got done helping not even an hour ago.”

“I bet Yanyu had to drag you out,” the monkey successor snorted.

“Nah, she was snoring in the back room, she passed the fuck out a few hours back after a successful surgery,” he grinned in pride. His student has really come far since he first started teaching her and to think that she had doubts about her ability, now look at her working alongside the attending physicians. He can still remember her running towards him and lunged at him with utter joy on her face when she told him that she passed her qualifying exam. He is really proud of her.

“She deserves it,” he nodded.

“She does,” the monkey hummed as he got up, “but I think it’s time we talk about that little thing back in the cave.”

MK nervously straightened up as he scratched the back of his neck, “hahaha what do you mean?”

“You are still a terrible liar comet, why didn’t you call me,” he looked him in the eyes.

“I was going to,” he mumbled, not sounding at all convincing.

“Really,” his voice dripped with sarcasm.

MK tried to keep a straight face, but it didn’t last long as he groaned and put his face in his hands, “Alright fine I wasn’t! But I could have handled it! You're always there and I know I can count on you, but something I need to do by myself. I’m not a child anymore.”

“And I know your not, and I have tried my best to not hound on you,” he said then he let out a sigh, “believe me when I say that I know I worry a little too much-”

“A little?!” Mei shouted as she lifted the hatch up.

“Mei! How long have you been there?!” The twenty years old shouted.

“Hehehe, long enough,” she nervously giggled as she slowly climbed out and sat next to her brother. She had forgotten she was eavesdropping on them and just had to blurt out. “Kinda forgot, but I still stand by my point.”

“I know, I mean ever since you left I've been trying to hold back from outright following you around,” he reluctantly said, not even blinking an eye at Mei’s sudden appearance.

“And I'm glad you haven’t, Mei already has a tracker on all of us,” he shot a glare at his sister.

“Wait really?”

“Yes siree!”

“…I feel like I should talk to you more about that kind of stalking,” he eyed her as he was forcibly reminded of another monkey and his stalking.

“Have you seen the number of times we unintentionally get into weird situations, let alone the times we actively seek it out?” She deadpanned.

“And I take that back,” he retracted his words. “But regardless, I trust you Starbright. I trust you even when I want to scoop both you and your sister up and hide you away from the world. But when shit like this happens, I get fucking worried cause that could have ended in a complete disaster, you understand?”

“But it didn’t!” He protested.

“But it could have,” he shot back and leaned in close, “and I’m so fucking grateful that it didn’t. Cause what if something did happen and the both of you wound up biting more than you could chew, fuck the two of you could have died and I wouldn’t have known shit until I saw your corpse.”

“I-I,” MK didn’t know what to say as he lowered his head alongside Mei. Both teenagers were at a loss of words at the reality of the situation, especially MK.

Macaque took a deep breath and let out a huge sigh as he brought both children close to him, “Look, I trust you to take care of yourself, but if you think you land in a situation you can’t handle, please call me. I know I sound repetitive at this point, but I stand by my fucking word that I will come, okay.”

Both of them looked up to meet their dad’s concerned eyes and nodded.

“You got it,” Mei smiled and leaned further into his fur.

“Okay,” MK sniffed as cuddled closer to him.

The black furred monkey smiled down at both of them and gave them each a kiss to the forehead and silently watched the bustling city below just a little longer.

“I’m fine my queen,” Bull King grumbled as he walked through the cave. “I sustained only minor injuries.”

“I know you have, but you were overtaken by a sinister energy source that managed to drive you mad with power that put your meridians past the point of exhaustion,” she deadpanned. “You need to rest.”

“It still doesn’t make sense how such a source can overtake father's mind,” Red son muttered as he looked through an ancient book. “I have heard tales of items having power from their previous owners and using it to their own design, but never of just raw aura. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“You're not wrong spitfire,” they turned to see Macaque phasing out from the shadow of a rock.

“Six Eared Macaque,” Bull King grumbled before he suddenly caught a bag that was thrown at him. “What is-”

“Spiritual roots from the Kunlun Peak, brew those in tea and they should help your median lines get back into condition before the month is up,” the monkey said as he walked closer.

“This is most useful, I will transfer the money-” Macaque cut her off.

“Consider this repaying the favor of saving my son Raki.”

“If I had not attempted to harm your child in my plight of madness there would be no need for this,” DBK gritted out and slightly lowered his head. He knew that the slight of offense of their agreement was on him and his mad conquest of power, if the Six Eared Macaque declared retribution for his actions then he would have to honor his word. What the outcome will be for both sides remains a mystery.

“Yeahhh what you did was stupid, but that’s actually what I came down to talk to you guys about,” he patted Red Son on the shoulder, “your kid is right about the power madness, what happen to you was not that.”

“What?” Both father and son blurted out.

“Explain,” the mother's eyes narrowed as her hand twitched.

“You were being possessed by one bitch of a spirit, what kind, I don’t know, but I do know the signs of possession when I see one.”

“How?”

“Was the different colored glowing eyes not obvious enough? His spouts of madness? Him going completely feral? Whatever you guys found is powerful, powerful enough to influence you BK.”

There was a silence as the surreal announcement enveloped them then someone growled as two craters appeared on the walls.

“Who dares think they have the audacity,” Queen Iron Fan hissed out as the wind began to swirl around her.

“I swear when I find the leech who manipulates me, I will tear their body limb from limb, bone to bone, blood into ashes and let their soul never find rest,” the King growled out in utter hatred.

Prince Red Son said nothing as sparks of fire flickered on and off around different corners of the cave and his hand trembled with fury.

The Royal Bull family does not take lightly to insults upon their names. They are known for sparking dread within people, making those fall to their feet, being a symbol of fear and power spread all through the nation and someone had the insolence to try to not only take control of their King but even fucking dare try to rip the family apart and kill them under his own hands?

They shall feel their wrath, this they declare.

“Well I have my message out of the way,” he wasn’t even fazed by their spirited anger, “Red a word.”

This snapped the prince out of his fury as he walked over to his pseudo uncle, “How may I help you?”

“Not me per say, but certainly my two kids who are worried the hell for you.”

“Their okay right,” he quickly questioned as he knew MK was alright but hadn't seen signs of Mei.

“A little bruised up, but they had worse, but my advice to you kiddo is talk to them. They have been worried out of their minds and I’m sure whatever you might have done they’ll forgive you.” He knew that Red Son wasn’t talking to them out of some sort of self doubt and guilt, but he wasn’t about to pry into what he did.

“You really think so?”

“You’ll have to ask them yourself.”

“…I will,” he nodded, “Thank you.”

“No problem, but let me tell you that since I have known you for a long time and I know you wouldn’t do abuse trust so lightly, especially from people you give a shit about, I’ll let you off with a light warning,” his eyes began to faintly glow a light violet color, “I may not know what you did, but don’t try to maliciously deceive them again, okay.”

“Yes sir,” he immediately said.

“Good boy,” he smirked and ruffled his hair, “now stop fucking around and send them a text before I duct tape their mouths myself.”

“They’ve been that bad?”

“I almost sicced Daiyu on the both just so they could do something else other than complain,” he deadpanned.

“…full permission to do the same if they get past that point,” he smirked.

“You don’t need to even ask me.”

“Yes!” He excitedly pumped his fist.

#monkie kid #lego monkie kid #macaque #six eared macaque #mk #PlumTeaAU

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